


Crazy He Calls Me

by magnificent



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Sexual Tension, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-09-02 00:52:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8644909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificent/pseuds/magnificent
Summary: Gob is too dense to realize why the Lone Wanderer goes to such lengths to make him happy.Inspired by orayang's fic, "Touch".





	1. 101

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orayang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orayang/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7306468) by [orayang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orayang/pseuds/orayang). 



His focus is entirely on the dusty radio on the left side of his bar. For the past few minutes, he's heard nothing but static, and the occasionally garbled word from a voice that could _maybe_ pass as Three Dog's.

It's midday in Moriarty's Saloon, and hotter than Hades. All the patrons in the bar are slicked with sweat, eyes sunken and tired, dirt clinging to their faces. Most everyone is quiet, too overheated to speak, simply taking refuge in cold beers, grateful to have a place to go to that's just _slightly_ cooler than that awful heat wave outside.

The static continues.

“Gob,” Nova says, running thin on patience. “Just change the station.”

“Why... won't... you... _work?”_ he snarls, pounding it with the palm of his hand. It shudders under the blows, until Gob's afraid that he might break it if he hits it another time. He growls, upset. He _wants_ to hear Three Dog. The radio is about the only decent thing in this shithole, and listening to Three Dog talk about the Good Fight is just enough for him to feel like there's hope out there.

“Dammit!” he exclaims, and bangs his closed fist down onto the bar.

He looks up just in time to see a tiny young girl at the door, the wash of heat from outside telling him that she'd only just come in.

Nova is fiddling with the radio, oblivious to the stranger, and sets it to Enclave. “There we go.”

Gob's mouth sours. That girl is still staring at him, looking terrified out of her mind, her arms hugging a BB gun like it's a teddy bear. Doesn't look older than fourteen.

The day isn't half over, and he's already spooked a kid, who looks like she's about to cry. _Goddamn monster,_ he growls at himself. _Way to go._ He's not used to seeing kids, especially since there are only two in town, and caravans and traders don't exactly want their children coming along with them into the heart of the motherfucking wastelands.

Gruffly, he turns his attention away from the girl, who has tears leaking out of her eyes, and pretends to tie his shoe. Gives him an excuse to duck behind the bar, and gives her a chance to get the hell out and find her parents. Bar's no place for a scared little girl, 'specially not one who looks like a strong breeze would blow her down.

“Hey, baby, you alright?”

 _Ah, good, so Nova's noticed her too._ He grimaces and stands up, facing away from them. He sees Nova with her hand on the girl's shoulder, out of his periphery. The kid's wiping her eyes.

“I... I can't find my daddy,” she sobs.

“Awh, it's okay, baby. We'll find him. Is he one of the traders that pulled in today? A guard?”

And with that the girl breaks down completely, and Nova isn't able to get another word out of her. Gob feels himself shrink down with guilt, but he's also relieved that he isn't the only cause of her distress.

“Gob,” Nova orders, snapping her fingers, “Brahmin milk.”

He nods, and reaches for the cleanest glass he can find. Last thing the kid needs is to get cold sores off of some greasy mug. He fills it half-way, checking the amount of milk in the pitcher, and nods to himself. If she finishes that off, he'll have more to offer her without Moriarty noticing.

Though, he hopes that Moriarty isn't that much of a bastard—what kind of man would demand money from a distraught little kid?

 _Well,_ Gob thinks, _if it would be anyone, it would be that bastard._

To his horror, Nova pushes the kid all the way up to the bar and seats her on a stool. Gob turns his face away again, ashamed. He's overly conscious of his peeling skin, the raw muscles and tendons visible on his arms, the wet, shimmering, protective goop that keeps his inner tissues safe from the outside air. If he still had ears, they'd be burning from shame.

_Goddammit, Nova, the kid cried when she saw me and you have to give her a close-up view?_

“Drink this, sweetie,” Nova says gently, and looks Gob in the eyes, worried. “I'm gonna go find Simms.”

He nods, and she darts out the door.

There's silence again, except for the tinny sounds of patriotic music from the radio.

Gob sighs. The girl is sniffling.

“I, uh,” he says, “I have a handkerchief.”

The girl makes a tiny noise and he risks a glance at her. Her huge blue eyes are fixed on him.

“That a yes? You want it?”

She nods, and he sighs again as he spies a long, clear trail of mucus spill down her nose, across her lip, and right onto the freshly-cleaned bar surface.

_And not even five minutes after it had been wiped._

“Here,” he says, fishing it out of his pocket. “It's clean. Not like I have a nose to use it on.”

Rather, he uses it to mop the sweat off of his brow while he works. He learned the hard way, how to keep himself from sweating so much, after Jericho had beaten him to an inch of his life after he'd dripped into his whiskey. He hopes that the kid won't mind a little bit of dry sweat too much—awh, hell, who is he kidding? Sweat or not, it's still from a ghoul.

The kid snags the handkerchief so fast that it startles him. She covers her face, pressing the white cloth into her eyes, and is quiet.

Gob frowns and looks away again. Some of the other patrons have left, too, bored. After all, lunch breaks only last so long—smoking a cigarette outside and laughing with your buddies is more fun than sitting in a gloomy bar with a ghoul and a snot-nosed kid.

“What are you?”

He starts at the question, having half-forgotten that the girl could speak at all.

“What, never seen a ghoul before?” he asks gruffly. He won't look at her now, especially not after a question like that. If she really _hasn't_ ever seen one, then she's probably from one of those 'humans-only' communities that treat ghouls like monsters out of a horror story.

“No,” the little girl says. “What's a ghoul?”

“You're... you're kidding me, right?” Forgetting himself, he looks at her, and she flinches. He turns away again. “You know... shuffler, rotter, zombie...”

“Oh!” the girl exclaims. “I've heard of zombies before.”

He grimaces. _Of course._ That one was less popular, but he's not surprised to hear that humans use such a nasty phrase as the proper term for his race.

“Why can you talk, then?” the kid asks, and Gob crosses his arms, trying not to roll his eyes. “I thought zombies wanted to eat brains and human flesh.”

“That's right,” he growls, finally having enough of the mean little shit. “But did you know what zombies like to eat best?”

The question is hushed and scared. “Wh...what?”

“The brains of _little girls!”_ Gob snarls, half-lunging forward. He feels a bit bad as he does it despite himself, but he's not prepared for the reaction of the kid—she shrieks bloody murder and topples off the back of her chair.

“Shit,” he mumbles, and runs around to her side.

“Stay... stay away from me!” she sobs, scrambling backwards, and Gob curses again. _Not exactly doing anything to get rid of the monster stereotype, are we?_

“Hey, look, kid, it was a joke!” he says, kneeling. “I ain't gonna hurt you.”

Thank god no one's in the bar. Moriarty would have his head for that one, for sure.

The kid is sitting on the floor now, her slender little legs splayed out in front of her, her oversized jacket askew.

And Gob sees what he wished he would have seen the first moment he saw her—emblazoned across her chest are the numbers 101.

 

The kid's lip trembles. “That... was a bad joke,” she says, and hefts herself up. “'Specially since I could'a hurt you.”

Gob tries not to laugh. “What, with that thing?”

The BB gun looks about as bashed up as the radio. Probably older than the kid, and by a good many years, too.

“I...” the girl chews her lip. “Yeah. It's modified. I did it in the Vault, before...”

 _Ah,_ he thinks, grateful to have that affirmed. So she really is Vault-fresh. Never seen a ghoul let alone heard of one, and probably never exposed to more than a single iota of radiation. Hell, he's probably putting off more by himself than anything they've got down in that Vault 101 hole. He's surprised that anyone is still able to survive down there, after so many long years.

“I killed four men with this,” the kid says suddenly, and starts crying again.

Gob isn't really sure what to do, not with those words nor _any_ of the situation, really. He clears his throat, awkwardly, still kneeling by her side.

Eventually she finishes, her tears running dry overly fast from all of her sobbing before, and she wipes her eyes one last time before handing the handkerchief back to Gob. “Thanks.”

Gob doesn't dare take it from her. “No, keep it.”

If today is any indication of her life out in the wasteland, she's gonna need it.

Still... four men? This little girl? Gob can't imagine what might have happened that this kid would come running right up to Megaton after something like that. Shit must be going down in that Vault.

“Glad I didn't try to scare you any harder,” Gob jokes nervously.

“I didn't know zombies were real,” the girl confesses.

“Well... they're not, not in the sense that you're thinking of, probably. We're ghouls. It's a bit different.”

“How?” the girl asks, tilting her head, and Gob cringes. She doesn't realize how hurtful of a question it is, this demand to know what separates him from the hordes of the undead. A trader once gave him a pre-war novel as a joke, for three caps, about real zombies—at least, what the word originally meant. Bloodthirsty, mindless animals, dumber than a feral ghoul.

“For starters,” Gob says, “I'm not dead.”

Her eyes widen.

“Second, I... uh, I don't actually eat human flesh,” he says with a nervous laugh. “Like you said, it was a bad joke. Ghouls and humans eat the same food. Except, I could survive off of radiation alone, if I really had to.”

He doesn't dare tell Moriarty this, though, terrified that the man might decide to try to see how long his 'indentured servant' could go without a meal. Just because he _could_ survive, he doesn't want to try it. It would still be starvation.

The girl nods. “Oh! So... you're like some sort of superhuman!”

The notion is so ridiculous that Gob bursts out laughing.

She smiles, and stands up. Holds out her hand.

“My name's Aris,” she says, shyly. “What's yours?”

“Gob,” he replies, eyeing her hand. What does she expect him to do with that? Does she want him to hand something to her?

He's about to ask her what she wants when Aris shrugs and lets her hand fall to her side. Gob watches, something in the back of his mind churning, and starts, cautiously, “Wait. Were... were you wanting to shake my hand?”

He wouldn't dare ask the question, except that this kid is from a Vault—only a Vaultie would be dumb enough to not know that you're not supposed to do that sort of thing.

“No,” the kid says, sounding affronted, and Gob's stomach sinks. _I knew it._ And then she adds, “I was trying to help you up.”

“Help... me up,” Gob repeats dumbly, and then realizes he's still on his knees before her. “Oh!”

He stands, and then halts, holding himself very still. _Dammit, dammit, dammit._ Just like that, there went his only chance of getting human contact for the first time in... in _years,_ and he ruined it. He closes his eyes, his insides coiling with self-hatred. He's disgusted by himself, hating how he wants, no, how he _needs_ to be touched again, just _one more time-_ and his only chance of feeling another person's skin is with a tiny little _kid._

He doesn't want this. He hates being at this kind of mercy to anyone, and he'd give anything to be held by his mother, or have his hand touched by Nova even _once._ But a kid? The townspeople already see him as a monster, what on earth would they think if they saw him towering over this little girl?

_Pervert. Pedophile._

_Monster._

“Now we can shake hands,” Aris says cheerfully.

Gob wets his lips. “Look, kid, I don't know if that's something you wanna do.”

“My daddy taught me to be polite to other people,” she insists.

The fingers of his right hand clench up—and then unwillingly, he reaches out.

Aris's small hand fits into his, her thumb wrapping over his hand— _could she be younger than fourteen?_ She's so tiny. If it hadn't been for the small swell of breasts underneath that Vault suit that Gob _hated_ himself for noticing, he might have pegged her to be much younger.

But, oh god, is it a relief. He'd forgotten what a smoothskin felt like, the soft unbroken flesh so warm and fragile in his grip. He gives himself credit, though, because instead of any kind of arousal, he feels joy. _Thank god I'm not that kind of a monster yet._ He'd feared that the blood would go right below his waist the instant that he touched _any_ female, but it seems like kids are just fine. _Again: thank god._

This moment, this instant in time, where a child is reaching out to him in kindness instead of cringing away in fear, Gob knows that he's going to remember this for a long, long time. And hopefully, it won't be quite so long until someone wants to touch him again.

Aris takes her hand away, and he curves up his fingers unconsciously, not wanting that small hand out of his grasp. Something flickers in her eyes and Gob is afraid that she might have noticed his pleasure.

 _I'm not dangerous, I swear,_ he wants to plead, but he knows that that would only make the situation worse.

The door opens and Gob stuffs his hands in his pockets.

“Gob,” the stern voice of Lucas Simms says, and he stiffens. “Thanks for watching her.”

“Right,” he says, relieved. “Uh, you're welcome.”

The suit is the first thing that Simms sees. “Vault 101, huh? Looks pretty clean. Where'd you get this?”

“She's from the Vault,” Gob offers, seeing how Aris has gone silent again. “Didn't say much more than that.”

“You're looking for your dad?” Simms asks, and when Aris nods, he lets out a long breath of air. “Shit. I don't know, kid, there's a lot of people who stop through here...”

Nova says, cautiously, “I don't know if it was your dad, but I woke up real early this morning because I heard voices. Colin was talking to another man.”

Aris lights up, and Gob watches her expectantly, waiting for a dozen questions to come spilling out of her mouth. Instead, she turns red, and stammers, “D-did you catch his name?”

Gob blinks. She's _shy._ Of Lucas Simms and Nova? Two of the most least-threatening people in Megaton?

Nova shakes her head. “I guess we'll have to talk to Moriarty for that. Is he still out back, Gob?”

“Last thing I knew he was.” Talking with traders, trying to grease his way into a one-sided deal.

Simms tsks. “He won't want to be interrupted.” The sheriff leans down, a comforting smile on his face. “You wanna come with me, kid? I don't have any room in my place, but the common house should be able to put up with you for awhile, alright?”

Gob flinches at the sudden pressure against his back and, amazed, realizes that Aris is holding onto the hem of his shirt. She's hiding behind _him,_ of all people. Because she's afraid of the _sheriff._

He's wondering when he's going to wake up from this crazy dream. His disbelief, and the thrill of happiness that this shy girl is relying on him to protect her, makes him say, “I'll show her.”

 

Gob's torn between _running to try to get this crazy kid off of his back_ and _dancing for joy because someone's crazy enough to rely on him_ , but the instant they step outside it becomes neither. He feels himself sag in the heat, feels the ooze all over his body harden up against the crippling heat.

“Hot,” the kid mumbles.

“Mm,” Gob agrees. “Guess it was never like this down in the Vault, right?”

Aris shakes her head, and Gob is alarmed that she is still holding onto his shirt—small fingers curled along his waistband, the tiniest sliver of her skin touching his back.

_Keep it together, goddammit._

“You... you wanna talk about what happened?” he asks, shielding his eyes against the sun. The walk to the common house is both mercifully short and not long enough.

“Don't really know for sure,” Aris says, with a shrug. “My dad found a way to leave the Vault, my best friend was killed, and then the Overseer tried to kill me too. He... sent men after me. The dads of my friends. Their family members, uncles. And... I killed them.”

“Why would he do something like that to a kid?” Gob finds that he's angry, which is unusual. He's not used to feeling empathy for smoothskins. Normally he thinks that the less there are, the better.

“I don't really know. It was all such a nightmare,” Aris murmurs. “I can hardly believe that it's really happened.”

He's seething. A sweet child like her, up against grown men? Armed with nothing but a BB gun? But then he remembers that she killed them, all by herself.

Gob thinks that there's something more to this kid than she's letting on.

“So, this is it,” he says, opening the door. “The common house.”

The stench is even worse than in the Saloon. Dirty, sweaty human bodies, the smell of vomit and feces. This is where the traders stay, as well as the town junkies, the Buffout-addicts and Jet-huffers.

Aris is hiding behind him again.

“It ain't so bad, kid,” he says, trying to soothe her. “Just stay here while Mr. Simms talks to Moriarty for you, okay?”

“What about you?” she asks, and his stomach lurches. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the Saloon,” he says. “I'm the bartender, after all.”

Her eyes are large again, the phrase unspoken: _please don't leave me._

Gob hates himself, but he knows it's for the best as he trudges away from the common house, the door slamming between them. A sweet kid like that and a nasty old ghoul like him? He would love to stay and comfort her, coddle her, tell her stories, but that wouldn't be right. She's a human, after all, and once she spends more than a week in the wastelands she'll realize that ghouls and humans just aren't meant to be friends.

 


	2. Lolita

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Black Friday special from yours truly.

Gob doesn't ever expect to see her again.

After Moriarty was alerted to Aris being in the common house, he stopped over and talked to her for a few minutes, and then barged back into the bar, whistling tunelessly, obviously pleased about something. He'd asked Nova what happened, but she only shook her head.

“She's gone,” Nova had said. “Left town.”

And they both agreed that that was the last of her.

In a sense, it was.

 

Business as usual—it's a Friday night and that means that the bar is packed. Jericho is on the far end of the saloon, shouting drunken slurs for Gob to serve him more whiskey, and the traders are hardly any better. It's a fast-moving pace of _get over here, dammit,_ and _don't drop that_ and _don't stand so close to me... disgusting!_ Then, of course, there's a few jibes about his stench, which Gob has never noticed because he barely has a sense of smell, and then a few cuffs over the top of his head—course, this is always with the end of a pistol or the hilt of a dagger. No one would ever actually dirty their hands by him.

And Moriarty's shouting at him to get back to the bar, _stop lookin' at yer shoes, boy, git over here—_ and Nova has a grimace on her face as she leads two young men upstairs— _both?_ At the same time-?

And then the door opens and allows the black of night to be seen, edges of buildings and starlight framed by the lively bar, and a tiny slip of a girl, ghost-white and covered in blood, stumbles in. Her large eyes scan the room, dipping up and down as her eyes struggle to focus, and then she finds her target. She takes a few uneven steps forward, dripping blood onto the floor, and Gob rushes forward to catch her as she collapses into his arms.

“A... Aris?” he breathes, and she moves against him, weakly. He steps back, his hands pushing her away, afraid that she's struggling against him, when he sees that it's just that she's struggling to _breathe._ There's a dagger pressed all the way into her chest, two inches above her heart, and her eyes are fluttering.

Gob feels an awful chill settle over him. He's aware of the saloon going quiet, of men and women crowding to see the spectacle: a ghoul clutching a tiny girl, dying as he can do nothing but gape, frozen.

She will die here.

“Out of the way, dumbass,” he hears, and one of the patrons pushes him aside. _Doc Church. Thank god._ The doctor mumbles a few other choice words about the intelligence of ghouls in general, pulls the dagger out, and injects a stimpak.

There's a polite silence, and then a few people clap when the wound begins to close, as if they were viewing nothing but a dinner entertainment. Gob finds himself gritting his teeth. Aris was _dying,_ and no one even cared enough to try to help? The only man to even think to try to save her was Doc Church, and that was probably more because he was so frustrated by Gob's paralysis.

Apparently they think that the show's over, because each patron is turning away, already bored, moving back to their respective seats.

Church, to Gob's horror, is going through her pockets. He's too shocked to say anything, too thankful that she's healing, but Doc Church must catch his wide-eyed stare because he says, “One hundred caps. For the stimpak, plus emergency care.”

“Emergency care?” Gob repeats faintly. _What does that mean? Is he referring to the unceremonious, harsh way he tore the knife out of her? Goddamn._

“Stimpaks are expensive,” Doc Church says coldly, “and so is my time.”

With that, he leaves the bar, apparently having found the number of caps he was looking for. Which leaves the kid laying on the dirty floor, wet with beer and piss, just starting to groan and blink.

Gob isn't sure what to do, but he knows it isn't right to leave her on the floor like a piece of trash. He bites what's left of his lip, indecisive. If he tries to help, people might get angry with him—worse yet, _she_ might be angry. If he were laying half-dead on the floor, he has no doubt that a little kid would do much to try to help him. After all, he's a ghoul and she's human. Why would she ever want to do anything for him?

But he knows that's not the right thing to do.

So he lifts her up, as gently as he can, and takes her upstairs. Lays her down on his bed, not even caring that she's soaking his mattress with blood.

“B... Butch,” she sighs, and something about the way she says the name fills Gob with an uneasy envy. Her eyes open. “I... where am I?”

“Moriarty's Saloon,” he says, worried. “You almost died.”

“...Gob?”

“You remember my name,” he says, smiling despite himself.

“Do you remember mine?”

“Aris,” he says hesitantly, the name foreign on his lips, and he almost feels as if it is a sin to speak a smoothskin's name. He feels bad enough calling Nova's name, even though they've been working together for five years.

Aris smiles back, weakly. “Good job.”

Gob stays beside her, simply watching, and her eyes drift closed again. Despite the stimpak, it's clear that she was moments away from death, and the strain of that would not be taken away by mere chemicals—it will take a long time, he thinks, before she'll alright.

He hears footsteps outside the door, and then a harsh voice:

“Hey,” Moriarty growls, finally discovering the two of them. “You can't be up here.”

“I'm sorry,” Gob says, standing abruptly. “I'm sorry, sir, I'll be right back down—I just wanted-”

“Not _you,”_ he spits. “Her.”

The pair of them look at the little girl on the bed.

“Uh...” Gob stammers, and internally, he's furious that Moriarty would try to deprive the kid of even the smallest of comforts.

“I don't let anyone stay in my place without payment,” Moriarty sneers. “It's one hundred and twenty caps.”

“That, that's with service,” Gob says, automatically. “And Nova's-”

Moriarty turns the glare onto him. “Shut your goddamn mouth.”

“With... service?” the kid asks weakly, her fingers fluttering to her belt. Carefully, she pulls out a handful of caps. “So... that means... if I pay that much, then Gob can stay...?”

Moriarty hocks out a laugh, incredulous and mocking. “You want this sack o' shit to nurse ye back to health, is that it? Because I doubt yer old enough or kinky enough to want him fer anything else.”

The kid stares at him, eyes large and innocent, and Moriarty sighs. “Fine. Ye give me the caps, you get the ghoul and the room fer the night. Whoever thought I'd be working the bar again, after so many years?”

He takes her caps, shaking his head on the way out. Then-

“Moriarty.”

The old bastard turns his head, eyebrow raised.

Aris is barely able to lift her eyes to meet his gaze. “I have the other hundred caps you wanted, too. For the information.”

A smile creeps across Moriarty's face, and Gob has never hated him so fervently as he does in this very moment. “Aye, I'll speak with ye in the morning, then. When you're a little more capable of listening to me.”

“Thanks,” Aris says.

The door closes, and Gob faces her, gritting his teeth. “You bought information from him? For _one hundred caps?”_

The cost is outrageous. He doesn't know if she realizes this.

“It was for my daddy,” Aris says quietly, and she fiddles with the single cap in her hands in a way that makes Gob wonder if maybe she really does know how badly she was swindled.

“Awh, hell, kid,” Gob says heavily, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You should'a tried me. I would have seen if I could get something out of him.”

“Really?”

“Mm,” he says, although now that he thinks about it, that might be a lie. If Moriarty ever thought that Gob was trying to cheat him out of caps, then Moriarty'd have his hide for sure.

“...Thanks,” Aris says quietly.

Gob snaps out a clean bedsheet and covers her. As he tucks the sheet around her, an odd feeling in his throat, their eyes meet.

“Gob?”

“Yeah?”

“What did Moriarty mean when he said about...” her face scrunches up, “...wanting you for anything else?”

If Gob had enough skin left to blush, he would. “Uh... hell, kid, what kinda question is that?”

A blank stare is all he gets in return.

Jesus. If someone has to teach this kid about the birds and the bees, it sure isn't gonna be him.

“Not something you need to know about,” he says gruffly.

“But isn't it something that Nova does?”

He sits at the edge of the bed again, his shoulders hunched. “You don't need to know the details, but it isn't anything good. Just, he lets her stay with all kinds of men for a fee, and, well, it isn't something anyone should have to do.”

“Oh,” Aris says, her voice a little too bright, “you mean he's making people pay to have sex with her?”

Gob chokes.

“I'm the daughter of a doctor, Gob,” she tells him. “I _do_ know what sex is. Just... I didn't expect people to be doing anything like this.”

He scratches the top of his head, embarrassed. To be honest, he was accidentally marking her age down lower than it probably is, just because of how little she is. But yeah, fourteen, probably. Isn't that when kids start learning about that sort of thing? He can't remember. Been a ghoul for too damn long.

“Don't think any less of Nova for it,” he says. “It's not her fault.”

“Why does she do it, then?”

“Because Moriarty forces her to,” Gob says grimly. “Either that, or she starves to death.”

“Are you serious?”

“Mm. I'm sorry, smoothskin, but this is a pretty hard world. No one's got food to spare, let alone water, unless you can do something for _them._ So hold onto whatever caps you have left. Otherwise, you'll die.”

Simple as that.

They're both silent for a little, listening to the din of the bar below them.

Then, “Smoothskin?”

The corner of Gob's mouth turns up a little. “Yeah. You never heard that? S'what us ghouls call humans.”

“Why?”

“Cause your skin is so smooth... and tasty...” Gob says, unable to resist repeating Winthrop's old joke. But rather than scream like Aris had when he first cracked a joke like that, she giggles. “Good, you caught onto that one.”

Granted, it certainly wasn't as cruel as lunging for a kid who'd never even heard of a ghoul.

“I guess your skin _is_ kinda leathery,” Aris decides, and Gob's heart thrills at the remembrance. He watches her eyes roam around his room, taking in the sparse décor; the only things he truly owns are the books scattered across the room—the zombie book that the trader had sold him, as well as _Where the Red Fern Grows_ , and two separate editions of Grognak the Barbarian. Aside from his clothes, Gob's got nothing.

But if Aris finds this pathetic, she doesn't voice it.

“Hey... thanks for taking care of me,” she says, quietly. “No one else would have, I think.”

Gob wants to reassure her, but he knows that she's right. Simms would do all that he could, and so would a number of other residents of Megaton, but none of the better people in the town ever come into Moriarty's Saloon.

“It was nothing,” he mumbles, his face heating.

“Gob,” Aris says with a short laugh, “really. Take a compliment.”

He smiles, uneasily. “So, uh... what happened out there? Who did this to you?”

Aris closes her eyes. “Did you know a girl named Silver?”

 _Ah._ Yes, Gob knows her. The poor young prostitute that Moriarty had hired on as an alternative to Nova. Barely lasted two years. He didn't like her very much, but he felt bad when she devolved into that angry shadow of a woman, with Psycho filling her veins.

“She's dead,” Aris tells him, and he clenches his jaw. _This girl..._ “I asked him what I could do for him to get caps, he gave me an answer. I shot her, but it was point-blank and it went wide. She kept pushing the barrel away, started hitting me... I used the gun to beat her over the head until she died. Stabbed me with her last breath.”

Gob lets out a shaky breath. “Shit, kid.”

He didn't like Silver very much, but still.

Aris asks, “Did you wish it was her instead?”

“Huh?”

“To have survived,” she says, and her big blue eyes peek at him overtop the bedsheet.

Gob smiles ruefully and shakes his head. “Honestly, I never thought I'd see you again. I'm... glad you're back.”

The girl sighs and turns onto her belly, burying her face into Gob's pillow. His face flushes with heat as he watches her—like this, it's easy to imagine her as a grown woman, a smoothskin Nova's age, wrapping her arms around his pillow-

 _Stop._ His thoughts come to a screeching halt. Teenager or not, she's still too young, and she's a smoothskin, for goodness sake! Even if she's old enough for crushes and kisses, _he's_ too old for her—hell, he's Moriarty's age himself, even if he doesn't look it.

“Gob,” Aris says, her voice muffled, “can I ask a favor? Since I'm paying for your time, anyway?”

“Ask away,” he says, grateful for a distraction.

“Can you rub my back?”

Gob's head drops into his hands with a _thunk_ that he thinks is almost audible. _Why me?_

“It's just... I hurt, from all of that, and... I don't have any other friends who would do it. Please?”

“Smoothskin,” he growls, “think about what you're saying.”

“...okay?” she asks tentatively, and he's afraid that he scared her with his tone.

Gob isn't sure how to word this. What on earth can he say to explain to this girl the vast distance between the two of them? The bigotry and hatred? The scorn and disgust she would receive if people knew she _wanted_ him to touch her? And, worse yet, the kind of lynching he'd get from his agreement. No matter how innocent she might be, no matter how pure her intentions, not even the most platonic of gestures would be appropriate.

And with his _own_ hands on her, he's not sure if he'd be able to remember that she's off-limits.

He sighs. “Look... smoothskins and ghouls... if anyone down in the bar knew I was touchin' you...”

“Ah... oh,” she says, quietly, sounding embarrassed and upset. “Okay. So... I shouldn't ever touch you either?”

His throat closes up, and he rasps, “Probably not.”

There's a long silence, and Gob bids farewell to the hope clenching his heart, that the kid would maybe touch his hand again.

“Gob?” Aris asks, and he can hear a smile in her voice.

“Mm,” he grunts.

"If there aren't any ghouls in Megaton besides you, and normal people aren't supposed to touch you, then... when was the last time someone ever hugged you?”

He stiffens. “I...”

Goddammit. His mind is racing, caught between actually thinking about the question, and the thought that _is she asking what I think she is?_ and then the hope gripping his heart again, making him wish that she would just-

There's a hand on his back, and then looping underneath his arms and across his chest. The breath freezes in his throat. A sudden weight against his shoulders, Aris's chin pressing into him almost painfully, the side of her face brushing against his neck. Those small breasts, feeling a great deal larger now that they're _pressing up against his back,_ and his whole body trembles as she giggles in his ear.

“Sorry,” she says, and her weight lessens a little. “I didn't mean to fall on you. I guess I'm not quite as steady as I thought.”

He manages a short gasp, in and out, and holds it again, licking his lips. He feels dizzy, and he doesn't need to look to know that he's hard as a rock. It takes all of his effort to keep himself perfectly still, refusing to allow his hands to reach up—to touch her arms—to relax into her embrace—

“Aris,” he manages finally, his voice strangled, “how old are you?”

At least he should know how ashamed he should feel.

Aris sighs and her breath flutters against the tiniest hairs on the back of his neck. The remainder of his skin breaks out into goosebumps.

 _I can't be doing this,_ he frets, finally looking down at his lap, realizing in horror that this is probably the most furious erection he's had in a decade. _What do you even think you're going to do if by some miracle she's over eighteen? What on earth would that change?_

Her hand slips from his chest, slides down until it's on his thigh, her wrist coming to rest right on top of the pounding heat in his groin. He's unable to stop the soft moan from coming out, his entire body trembling, and he slaps a hand over his mouth.

_Oh god. Oh god. She's going to kill me, she's going to be disgusted, she's..._

...asleep?

A soft snore sounds again as she breathes out, and Gob smiles shakily. Very, very carefully, he picks up her hand with his thumb and index finger, and drops it far from his lap. Then, as slowly as he can, he turns, supporting her head and back, and lays Aris back down.

It's what she deserves. She has no idea, what kind of kindness she did for him. How that brief touch had electrified him, made him feel _human_ again. Even if his reaction was desperate and wrong, she had tried to be good to him.

And, it's because of that, that Gob leaves the room. He can't stay in there for another moment and stay sane, not with a young woman laying vulnerable. He can't trust himself, but even more, he owes it to her to stay away.

 


	3. Growing Up Fast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I can't believe that I have so many people giving me kudos on this! 11 already?! That's like, 20% kudos per view.  
> I didn't even announce this on my LW/Charon fic, so that you for finding this on your own and giving me a chance! This is an update just to show I love you <3  
> I will keep doing my best!

Morning finds Gob curled up outside the saloon, on the back porch, his head resting on the door—and he's just beginning to wake up, his brain foggy: _what am I doing outside?_ \- when the door flies open and Gob is thrown sprawled on the dirt path.

“Gob? There ye are. What the fuck are ye doing? Git in here. Morning set-up.”

Moriarty leaves the door hanging open. Gob sits up, brushing the dirt off of his arms, when he finally remembers what happened last night.

Heat blooms in his groin, and he grimaces. _Not something I want to deal with today._ Especially not when Aris wakes up, in his bed, and remembers how boldly she had draped herself onto him. She's going to be _pissed_ that he let her touch him, that she made a fool of herself... the pit of dread in his stomach is enough to undermine his lust, and he's able to stand up without his pants clinging to his crotch.

 _Well... even with a crazy little smoothskin around, work is same as usual,_ he thinks, almost relieved to have to have such hard labor today. Shining the bar counter, stocking the fridge, preparing ingredients for drinks... not too bad, except that Moriarty also has him buffing the tables until he can just about see his reflection in the thick gloss.

Moriarty comes around to inspect them, nodding approvingly. “Ye can stop there, boy. Any more and you'll be able to see yourself, and we don't need ye to be losing your lunch before you've had it, am I right?”

Gob grimaces, unnerved that he can see the faintest image of a scowling ghoul in the wood grain, glaring back at him. From that tiniest reflection, he can almost see himself as he's sure that the townspeople do: a snarling monster, with peeling skin and oozing sores. No better than a feral ghoul.

He's glad that the only mirror in the bar is in Nova's room. She's offered to let him use it, but only once—his vehemence otherwise was enough to convince her to not ask again. Seeing himself in the windows is bad enough. He's not seen himself since he was caught by slavers, and judging by the horrible looks he receives from other people, he's no better-looking than when he was first turned.

If nothing else, he's glad to be able to remember what he looked like _before._ Thick brown hair, if a little colorless, ruddy cheeks and a shy smile. He had blue-gray eyes that had since turned milky and glazed. Skin, of course, and a nose, a little bit too big for his face. He wasn't an ugly man then, but he certainly wasn't a looker. Explained why, of course, he had still been a virgin at twenty-three years of age, and, well, after _that,_ there was no chance of losing it ever again.

Not for lack of trying, though. He'd begged Nova a few times, ashamed, and had always fallen silent after she gave him a very gentle, _no._ For a few years, in Underworld, he'd thought... maybe with Willow... although those plans fell through when he discovered her just outside the museum with another ghoulette, their smiles devious and sharp as their hands delved beneath each others' shirts. Now _that_ had been a sight that he didn't mind, but it pretty much soured his chances of ever having a bedmate, let alone a relationship.

He wonders what Aris is doing, up in his room, just ten feet above his head. If she's waking up now, or if she's still asleep, warm and soft, so much like another pillow in his bed—

“Heya, Gobbie,” Nova says groggily, coming down the stairs. “How's it going?”

“We're almost set up,” Gob says quickly. “Hard night?”

“You kidding me? Two at once? Jesus, one bonehead is bad enough, let alone both of 'em coming at me from each end.” Nova sighs, oblivious to Gob's momentary pause. “Oh, and Moriarty told me about the girl.”

“Aris? Yeah?”

Nova smirks. “Heard she _rented you out_ for the night. How was that?”

He folds the cloth over in his hands. “N-nothing happened.”

“No kidding, dipshit,” she laughs. “I mean, what did you guys _do?_ Talk to each other?”

“Yeah,” he says, choosing to omit the part where she wrapped her arms around him. “She, uh, killed Silver. For the caps.”

Nova raises an eyebrow, putting a hand on her hips. “Well, well. That kid's a badass, huh?”

Gob shrugs. “Moriarty put her up to it. Said it was the only way she'd get to hear about her dad.”

Her expression darkens, and Gob tries not to feel too guilty about the small lie. While it wasn't the _only_ way to get the money, he knows it was the only _quick_ way. He doesn't blame her, and, selfishly, he doesn't want Nova to blame her either.

“Damn him,” Nova mutters. “Someday, that man will get what he deserves.”

“We say that year after year,” Gob reminds her, “but it never happens. What makes you think that this year will be different?”

“It already is,” Nova says, grinning.

“Hm?”

“First year that our little Gobbie's had a girl in his bed, right?” Nova giggles and dodges as Gob half-heartedly throws his cleaning cloth at her.

“That's not funny!” he protests. “She's a kid!”

“Yeah, so was I when I got here, and that didn't keep you from wantin' to screw me, right?” Nova snickers. “She's not _that_ much younger than me, right? She's what, thirteen? What's ten years of difference to a man who's gonna live a few times longer than the rest of us?”

He growls, “Don't _say_ things like that.”

“What, you thought I was being serious? Jesus, Gob, take a joke.”

“But it's not funny!” he snaps. “Saying something like that, about... about me 'n a kid...”

Nova shrugs again, her smile fading, and tilts her head. “It's not as if you were actually tempted, right?”

“I'm not disgusting,” he says, with as much dignity as he can manage. _Disgusting._ Good word to describe him: his face, his appetites, his whole _life._

Nova smiles, sadly, and pats him on the back, very briefly. “I know, Gobbie, I'm sorry for teasing. I...”

They're both quiet for a moment, Nova's eyes downcast, Gob's gaze fixed on her. “I know you look at me, still... think about me in that way. And I'm sorry. If I could help you, I _would._ I swear. You know I'd do anything to try to make your life a little better. But I can't. I _can't._ ”

“It's okay,” Gob says gruffly. “Not like I even know what I'm missing.”

Nova's looking at him so sadly that he finds himself adding, “She hugged me.”

The smoothskin blinks.

He looks away, embarrassed, and says, quietly, “She treated me like I was a real person, Nova. When she hugged me, she... she had her cheek pressed against my neck. You know how long it's been since I've touched another person's face? Fifteen years. Since _Underworld._ You'd think that being in a bar, surrounded by all kinds of drunk women, maybe _once-”_

He stops, and hangs his head.

“You like her,” Nova says in disbelief.

He says, desperately, “Please don't tell-”

“I won't. I don't think she's as young as thirteen anyway,” Nova says at last. “To be honest I was thinking ten until I saw that she had boobs. Besides, you're not the first man to look at a young woman like that. Give her a few years, and she'll be as safe as any other girl to touch. If you're lucky, she might already be fifteen or sixteen.”

Gob snorts. “Yeah, right. And what then? After she's legal, what d'you expect me to do? Ask her to 'hire' me again?”

Nova giggles, shaking her head. “Oh, god, aren't we a hopeless pair? The whore who gets too much sex and the ghoul who can't get enough.”

“Can't get _any,”_ he corrects.

“When Three Dog's signal gets better, maybe we can write him and get him to start airing a new kinda radio play about adventurers and ghouls and pretty young ladies, hm?” The wink that Nova gives him is so outrageous that he can't help but laugh.

“I don't think he'll decide to change those shorts about Daring Dashwood and his stalwart manservant just for the pair of us,” Gob snorts. “But try if you want.”

“Well,” Nova says, still giggling, “it's a good thing, about what happened with the kid, then.”

“Hm?” Gob is instantly alert, looking at his friend with concern. “You mean Aris?”

“Didn't Colin tell you? He got up early to do finances, and the kid was already downstairs. Chatted for awhile, and then she went right out the door. Said that she had something to do.”

 

As the days pass, the tiny hope that Aris was avoiding him faded into a deep grief. Surely she was dead. Surely a kid like her couldn't survive out there amongst the raiders and slavers and ferals and muties for this many days, no, _weeks._ It was almost a month since he'd seen her last. And then two. And starting into three.

He had reacted to her absence with fear and self-loathing, sure that he was the reason why she left without telling a soul, but as the days stretched on, he knew it had to be because she wasn't alive anymore. No girl, no matter how embarrassed or angry, would skip town and go to her death simply because she was mad at a ghoul.

Gob knew he didn't amount to enough—he was like an animal to these smoothskins, except for Nova, who loved him in her own way. To think that she was so upset at him, to actually make it out there and still refuse to come back, that was... laughable.

So, Gob mourned her. For the first few days he clutched his pillow to his chest and breathed in deeply, trying to catch the smallest bit of her scent, until there was no hint of it left. And when he was sure that poor little Aris was laying dead and rotting somewhere, he simply stared at the ceiling in his dark, empty room, and wished that things had gone differently that night. If he hadn't sat beside her. Why hadn't he just kept standing? Why did he have to be so greedy? Couldn't he have left things be, and stayed satisfied that she would deign to shake his hand?

Moriarty noticed the change in mood in his slave, and mocked him for it without realizing why he was so 'damn slow' and 'mopey'. Though he got cuffed in the head a little more often, he almost didn't mind.

After all, no one from Vault 101 knew that little Aris was dead. And without them knowing, none of her friends or family could mourn her. So it was up to him, and to Nova, who would give him an understanding look, and, of all things, gently held his hand for a few moments.

It was partly because of these reasons that he didn't recognize her when a young woman in tight leather pants and metal armor strode into the bar, pistols danging from her hips and a cigarette hanging from her cherry-red lips.

The other was because of her appearance. She was wearing lipstick, and a top that showed part of a lean and sunburnt midriff. Her hair had been cut shorter than Nova's. But she was alone, and some part of her still had the little girl from Vault 101 sticking out alone with everything else, awkwardly meshed in with the dangerous-looking lady with bullets on her belt and a scarred cheek.

Gob dropped the glass, not even caring when it shattered on his foot.

“Fuck, Gob, were you always so clumsy?” The stranger drops a pack roughly her own size on the floor and picks up a piece of glass. “You got a dustpan?”

“A... Aris,” he says, stunned.

She looks up, grinning, and his eyes widen—she's cut herself on the shard.

“Shit,” she mumbles, sticking a finger into her mouth. “Can you handle this? Apparently I'm just as clumsy as you.”

“Aris,” Gob says again, his throat tightening. “Aris.”

“I'm glad you remember me,” she says warmly. “It's been a long time.”

“Where have you _been?”_

She frowns, looking down. “Bigtown. The metro. Looking for my dad.”

“And... you never once thought to come back? I thought you were _dead.”_

The stranger has the decency to look guilty, even though her eyes are a much colder blue than they were before. “You didn't think I could last three months by myself?”

“I... you're a _child.”_

Although looking at her now, he's not sure that's true.

She lets out a heavy sigh and sits at the bar, watches him clean up the glass. “Gob... I'm... I'm sorry. I lied to you.”

He looks up, startled, dumping the glass into the wastecan.

“I took advantage of you,” she admits, and his stomach bottoms out, wondering what she had done. He didn't think that she'd stolen anything from either him or Nova or Moriarty, since the latter certainly would have said something, but-

“I... when I came here, I was so scared... I thought I was gonna die. I _felt_ like I was gonna die. My dad had _left me,_ and there was this huge world that I knew absolutely jackshit about.” Aris pauses, narrowing her eyes at him, and he gulps. “So, when a nice young lady and a ghoul assumed that I was a lot younger than I really am, well...”

These words run through his brain uncomprehendingly, and then there's an echo somewhere else in his mind. “Ah! So, you're... you're like, sixteen? Seventeen, even?”

“Gob, yesterday I turned _twenty,”_ Aris says gently. “I'm sorry. You thought I was a cute little kid and I, I took advantage of you.”

“...”

“I figured that people would be a lot nicer to a cute little girl, and, lo and behold, I was right, wasn't I? You took care of me, and so did Nova and Mr. Simms. All I had to do was keep my jacket on and keep my eyes down, and no one even began to realize that I was six years older than you guys thought. Course, the Vault suit helped too.” Aris snorts. “Can't tell a man from a woman in those things half the time.”

She runs a finger along the bar. “But... although I haven't found my dad yet, I'm closer, I think. And I'm doing well enough. So... I don't mind telling you about who I am now. And I'm sorry.”

“Smoothskin...” Gob says, hoarsely. “Why are you apologizing to me? You don't owe me anything.”

She smiles, and those big blue eyes look right at him, and he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it's _her._ By god, he never thought he'd see her again but she's _here._ “Because we're friends, Gob. Right? We're still friends, aren't we?”

He swallows, hard. “Y-yeah.”

He wants to hug her, right now, so badly. Not because of his libido, which thankfully is staying quiet, but because of all the emotions surging through his body—gratitude, joy, hope. He wishes that he could hug her and make her feel one hundredth of the pleasure and comfort that he'd gotten from her, prove to this girl that he really is happy to see her, so much that he can't express it. That her careless hug those months back had kept him from going mad, that her touches were the fuel he needed to stay sane.

There's also a rush of relief that he hasn't gone mad, that he's not as much of a monster as he'd thought—after all, there's certainly no shame in being attracted to a grown woman, no matter how little she is. With that in mind, he sneaks glances at her while he pours her a glass of whiskey—yes, without the Vault suit, there's no mistaking it. The curve of her hips, that hourglass shape, however slight—a mature woman if he ever saw one. He hopes that this is what his subconscious was seeing when he was turned on, not the tiny girl with the shy eyes.

“What made you decide to come back?” he ventures.

“Ah,” Aris says, brightening. “About that.”

She reaches across the bar, her fingers playing with the dials of the radio with practiced ease, and he watches the numbers settle on the signal for Galaxy News Radio.

“But-” Gob starts.

Aris winks, shushes him, and turns up the volume. Static fills the saloon, and several of the customers groan and turn around, ready to snarl at Gob and yell at him to turn it down, _stop trying that damn channel already,_ when:

“Good evening, boys and girls! Get ready to listen up, because I'm sure that _some_ of you haven't heard me for quite some time. In case you didn't know, my signal has been down.”

Gob's eyes are wide, and his hand is tapping the bar, thrilled. _GNR! GNR!_ He hasn't heard Three Dog in what's felt like _years!_

“But, a sweet young spitfire happened on through, and decided to listen to ol' Three Dog's howlin' tale of woe. Some of you have met her. Some of you have heard of her. Yep, it's the woman you're thinking of, Miss 101! The very same gal who's been helping folks all over the wasteland, from killing slavers to feeding beggars, the Lone Wanderer herself stopped in to try and find a way to boost my signal. And, as you are guessing, she _did._ But the best part? Here it comes. It was all for her best friend. Gob the ghoul, if you're listening to this, I gotta thank you something serious.”

His eyes widen, unable to believe what he's hearing. He stares at the radio, excitement building, and then looks at Aris again. “Did-”

She shushes him.

“Now, this is about the twentieth time I've repeated this message, so I hope you've heard this at least once by now, Gob. But the invitation still stands. You ever wanna hang out with old Three Dog, you just give the boys at the gates the word. And I'll even let ya pick the first song of the night. This is Galaxy News Radio, with myself, Three Dog your DJ, out! _Aoooo!”_

The radio turns to a very quiet static, and then the lusty jazz strains of Billie Holiday's _Crazy He Calls Me_ fills the air. “ _I say I'll move the mountains, and I'll move the mountains, if he wants them out of the way...”_

He gulps, staring into Aris's glittering blue eyes, his heartbeat thudding louder than the music blasting out of the radio— _“Crazy he calls me, sure, I'm crazy... Crazy in love, I'd say...”_

That moment. That very moment, he knows he's lost forever.

 


	4. Burn

If Gob's wildest dreams came true, then at that moment, Aris would stand up, take his hand, and make sweet, passionate love to him on his bed while listening to Billie Holiday's rich, longing voice... but, unfortunately, his dreams have never come true, and Aris stays right where she is.

He has to take a moment, pacing back to the inventory, and looks at the bottles for a long while. There's a tear in his eye, and he rubs it away angrily. _Crying over something like this..._ but then again, how could he not? No one's ever done something so nice for him. No one.

He wonders what on earth possessed Three Dog to play a love song after talking about what Aris did for him, but his throat clenches in angry jealousy at the thought of it being any other way.

_“He moves me with a smile. The difficult I'll do right now, the impossible will take a little while...”_

Gob decides to get back to the bar before Aris leaves out of boredom.

Fortunately, she's still got that soft smile on her face, as if she's caught between laughing and speaking, and she only raises an eyebrow as he returns to her.

“Thank you,” he says, and his heart is too full of emotion, overflowing with all sorts of thoughts and dreams that make him stupid; dumb enough to reach forward and clutch her hand. “Thank you. Aris, I...”

Only then does he realize that she's drawn back a little, the smile gone from her face. Alarm and fear stirs in the pit of his stomach, and he jumps back as if burnt. _No—please—I'm sorry—I didn't mean to touch you—_ but the damage is already done. Her smile is gone, and he stares down at the bar. The shine is still bright and clear, and the light reflects across the surface well enough that he can see his reflection better than usual.

And the creature looking back at him is nothing but a mangled monster. A goddamn joke. He should be a white-haired old man like Moriarty, but instead he's a fifty-year old virgin, a lonely ghoul with the heart of a young man. A kid, really, not much older than Aris, who had gotten his skin stripped off after too many baths in the Potomac.

“Gob,” Aris says softly, and his head jerks up.

“Wh-what?”

“You know you're crying, right?”

 _Dammit._ He wipes at his eyes quick, before Moriarty sees him, and is horrified when new tears come to replace them.

Aris clears her throat. “You know... I have a handkerchief.”

Gob snorts, wiping his eyes with the palm of his hands. “You still have that old thing?”

“It's not clean,” she continues, “but it's very precious to me. You see, my first friend in the wastelands gave it to me.”

He chokes out a laugh, and she hands his old handkerchief back. Dirty. She's right. He turns it over in his hands. There's a bloodstain on the corner. Doesn't matter. He wipes his eyes, and this time they stay dry.

“It's a good handkerchief,” she says, softly, watching him. “May I have it back?”

He returns it to her, ignoring the grossly inappropriate impulse to see if it smells like her. He's just glad that he doesn't make much snot with just the nub of a nose left.

_“Sure I'm crazy... Crazy in love am I.”_

The song fades out and, to Gob's relief, is replaced by a cheerful jazz piece without lyrics. He licks his lips, nervous, not knowing what to say. He's never been good at small talk, especially bad since he's been a bartender for fifteen years, but this moment takes the cake for a complete lack of words.

“So,” Aris says, finally, “I've learned about a lot of things while I was away. You know. Looking for my dad. Talon Merc. Raiders. Helped out a few towns, saved some slaves, spent time with the Brotherhood of Steel... I'd like to say that I learned a lot, but I realized I don't know much about _you.”_

He lifts his head. “M-me?”

“Mm. You know I'm from Vault 101. Where are you from?”

“Ever heard of Underworld?”

She scrunches up her face and shrugs.

“It's south of here a bit. It's the city of ghouls,” he says, resting his elbows on the countertop. “Stayed there with my moms, Carol and Greta... by the way, if you ever make it down there, say hi to Carol for me, won't you? She's the one who really took care of me, and... well... I really miss her. Plus, I lived there, oh... fourteen years?”

Aris starts. “You're twenty-nine?”

He looks at her, uncomprehending, and then he realizes that she must have known that he's worked for Moriarty for fifteen years. She must have asked him. He lets himself smile, ruefully. “No, I... I'm a bit older. I only moved there when I was ghoulified. A caravan picked me up from way north and brought me the whole way down while I changed. Not the best trip, but I was grateful to them.”

He pauses, remembering, and then says, at last, “Fifty-two. That's my age, I guess, but we ghouls don't really like to put a number on it. Especially since some of us have been around since before the war.”

Her eyes widen. “No shit.”

Gob laughs, pleased that she's excited instead of alarmed, and then his expression sours as he continues, “Yeah, well, there's trade-offs, you know? You get to watch your skin peel off, your hair fall out, your nose rot away...”

He trails away, watching Aris's fingertips reach up to her nose. _Perfect. Her first day back in Megaton, and I've grossed her out._

“Does it hurt?”

“Only at first,” he says truthfully.

“It's not even itchy?”

He shakes his head, although he suspects that if his body didn't ooze so much of that nasty clear junk, he'd peel a great deal more, and would itch constantly. It normally drips out of the skinless places, but Gob's noticed that if he rubs it around a bit, it'll soak into the remainder of his skin and keep it healthy and shiny. Sort of like wiping down a leather jacket with animal fat to keep it supple-

He makes a strangled noise, one that stops half-way in his throat. Aris's fingers are stroking his arm, which he had thoughtlessly been leaning on. He straightens, his back ramroad-stiff, though he leaves his hands just where they are. Audience be damned, but he's not going to budge so long as this girl is touching him.

Doesn't mean he doesn't have to fight his instincts, though, which are screaming at him to drag her over the countertop and plow her brains out in Moriarty's office.

“How did you get burnt?” she asks.

“Uh,” he says, his eyelids fluttering as her fingertips make a circle across his skin, “the river's pretty radioactive. You usually come out of there with a little bit of swelling or redness. So after a lifetime of taking a bath each evening, well...”

“You didn't notice how much skin you were losing?” Aris sounds horrified.

Gob snorts, his eyes half-closed, watching her fingers stroke his arm. She's circling out from the parts with skin, running her index finger along the stippled edges of the seams between bubbled skin and raw flesh.

“You don't lose it that gradually,” he grunts, sucking in a breath as she hits a sensitive spot. “More like it just builds up and you don't even notice it until you lose a fistful of hair in the morning. And then it all happens over the course of a few weeks, and boom! You're a walking plague. Well, not really. We're not contagious or carry—oh, shit, shit.”

Her finger have strayed from the seams of skin to the exposed musculature, and electric tingles run all over him, a thousand times stronger and more sensual than the feel of her hands on his skin. He is trembling from the force of her touch, the exposed nerve endings crackling and stimulated, and he lets out another sharp curse as another shudder runs down his back, even though her hands have stopped moving.

Aris looks concerned. “Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

 _Hurt_ him? _Kid, if you knew what you were doing to me..._

He manages to shake his head, ignoring the heated rush of blood to his groin. “Nah. Nah, it wasn't that bad.”

 _Not that bad_ being one hell of an understatement. If she had kept touching him, maybe stimulated him a little in some other ways, whispered his name a few times, it would probably be enough to make him come. He couldn't have been more aroused than if she'd stuck her hand down his pants.

Though, at that thought, the ravenous heat below his belt jerks and hardens even further. He closes his eyes briefly, trying to remind himself that there's other people in the room. Moriarty, for one, the least sensual person in the world, talking to patrons... Jericho, in the corner, half-passed out...

He lets out a long breath, barely keeping his control. If she _ever_ does that again, he's either going to take her immediately or go feral from the repressed desire.

“How can you stand to do anything if you're always hurting so badly?” Aris asks, and the pity in her voice about breaks his heart. He's never been more relieved that there's a six-hundred pound block of wood in between them. Her question is laughable, but she certainly wouldn't be laughing if she could see how hard he had been—how hard he still _is._

“Gob,” one of the drunk townspeople shout, “two beers. Move it.”

“Yessir,” he calls back instantly, and moves much more slowly than usual, trying to calm his raging manhood with unpleasant thoughts: the slavers who took him, Silver's sneer when she found out that he was in love with Nova, Moriarty's face when he jeers at him—that last one does it, and he's able to deliver the beers without any fear of being noticed.

If Moriarty knew that his 'indentured servant' still had working equipment, well... Gob is pretty sure that he'd do something to make it _not_ work. No one wants a randy bartender, especially not when there's any number of pass-out drunk girls to take advantage of. And it's a hundred times worse if it's a ghoul.

“My turn for a question,” he says, when he's finished running around the bar. “Why did you cut your hair?”

“Took too long to mess with,” Aris says, shrugging. Then she winces. “Also, I got a few strands caught in my gun while I was reloading. _Not_ something you want to have happen during a firefight.”

“Jesus. What happened?”

She snorts. “They got ripped out, is what happened. And then after the raiders were dead, I used one of their knives to cut my hair.”

He studies her profile, trying to sound uninterested, and says, “It looks nice.”

“Haha, well, it needed a lot of fixing. Fortunately, I stumbled upon the house of a sweet old lady, and she helped me fix it. Was a real mess before Agatha got to this,” she says, as she touches the thick brown locks. There's the slightest curl to her hair, a feature that had been absent when it was so long that it reached her waist. “She was so nice.”

“Is she...” Gob begins to ask awkwardly.

“Oh, no, she's fine,” Aris hurries to explain. “Just, she wants me to go someplace dangerous. I don't know if I'll survive long enough to see her again.”

Gob snorts. That's an easy dilemma, he thinks. “Then don't go.”

She only looks at him. “But if I don't, who will?”

“Aris...” he starts.

“Sorry,” she says, and her voice goes low and sultry and teasing. “But I can't go back on my word, even if a handsome guy like you asks me to stay safe.”

 _H-handsome?!_ That's a good joke. Other than that, though, she hit the nail right on the head. “How did you know that's what I was gonna ask?” he protests.

“You had that look in your eye, like you were gonna say something sweet.”

Ah, if he could blush, he'd be a beacon. Still, he's a little worried that what's left on his face, beneath all of the burns and scar tissue, that she can see the red flush creeping into his cheeks.

“Kid...” he says, embarrassed. “You don't need to flatter me.”

“That's not how I see it. Every man needs flattered every so often,” Aris laughs. “The way I understand it, the only thing more precious to a man than his dick is his ego. And, of course, both need a little stroking now and then.”

She winks.

Gob cringes at hearing the words coming out of her mouth so carelessly, but he can't help but laugh. Right now she sounds like Nova. “I guess.”

“There's guys that I knew back in the Vault, who were always posturing and peacocking, acting like they were the coolest kids to walk the earth. But at least for their leader, it was mostly just covering up fears and insecurities. Butch Deloria,” she says, a faraway look in her eyes, and Gob flinches when he recognizes it as the name she sighed in his bed three months ago, when she was beginning to wake up and had caught sight of him, a tall male figure by her bed. “He thought he was tough, but he was really just a hungry kid with an alcoholic mama.”

 _I must be a glutton for punishment,_ he growls to himself, but he has to ask. “You said his name once before. I don't think you noticed. Was he...”

Her eyes widen. “Shit, I said his name? I didn't call you that by accident or anything, did I?”

He shakes his head. “Not really—just when you saw me and you were waking up, that night that you killed Silver... you said his name, and then didn't seem to remember.”

Aris mumbles something, rubbing her face, then says, her mood soured, “It was stupid. I was stupid. When we were... what, ten? He had this awful crush on me. Followed me around, picking on me relentlessly. I _hated_ him for it. Didn't help that we got into a fistfight at my birthday party. He practically took a shit on it and then rubbed it in my face.”

“Jesus,” Gob mutters. “Tough life no matter where you grow up, huh?”

“I didn't realize how he actually felt until he got older, starting to lose interest. We dated for a few weeks when we were sixteen. And,” she finishes grimly, “he left me for my best friend Amata.”

He gapes at her, horrified. Someone would... would be with her, have claimed her, and then, just, _leave?_ This Butch kid must be the biggest fool in the Capitol Wasteland. Angrily, he's glad that the kid's still stuck in the Vault. If nothing else, Gob knows where he can turn to if he needs a human punching bag.

Aris shrugs, apparently taking his silence as a sign of disinterest. “I'm sorry. It's probably just that you're both big guys.”

“...I am?” Gob asks, looking down at himself.

Aris snorts. “You ever measure the length and width of your shoulders, Gob? Jeez.”

He glances at each shoulder, self-conscious and embarrassed, and ducks his head. “I guess so.” He hadn't ever thought about the fact that he was a little bit taller and broader than the smoothskins around him—he was always too busy trying to shrink down into a smaller target.

“And your arms are probably the same size as my thighs,” she finishes, and Gob ducks even lower, ashamed. Great. He'd never thought about it, but apparently he's not just a monster, he's a tall, scary, intimidating one, too.

“Not like that's saying much,” he points out. “Your thighs are like twigs.”

Dammit, he wishes that he hadn't said that. Now he's thinking of her legs, slender and smooth... stepping out of those tight leather pants, leaving her panties on his bedroom floor... delicious heat wrapping around his waist, thrusting his hips deep into the wetness at the core...

“Gob...? Hello?”

He jerks his attention to her, stammering, “Y-yes?”

“You missed my joke. I said, 'well, at least they don't break like twigs'.”

He forces a smile. “Mm. That's good, too, else I don't think you'd have come back after meeting Silver.”

“I'd have crawled,” she says with a wink. “Especially if I knew that you were gonna carry me to bed.”

Gob grinds his teeth, hard. No. She doesn't mean it like that. It's a joke, like all the other things she's said so far, all the silly words they've exchanged...

Aris's face closes off, and he looks at her in mild alarm, worried that he's done something wrong. But all she does is scatter a few caps onto the countertop.

“For the whiskey,” she says, and winks as she adds a few extra, “and for the company.”

“You're leaving?” he asks, distraught. “No! Please don't go!”

She watches him, a faint smile on her lips. “I... I think I should,” she says, at last. “My dad is still out there somewhere. I've got a lot of ground to cover. And my next stop is Rivet City.”

“It's nighttime,” he says desperately. “Please don't go now. Wait until morning?”

“And what,” she snorts, “stay in the common house? You think I want to wake up in the middle of the night and find that I've accidentally rolled onto a used heroin needle?”

“You can buy a room here,” Gob pleads. “Like you did last time.”

He wonders if she'll tease him about 'renting' him, the same cruel joke that Moriarty had made, but her lips stay closed. She looks as if she's considering his offer. Then: “No, thanks, Gob. You're a real sweetie though. Take care of yourself.”

She's half-way to the door when Gob dashes ahead of her and throws himself into her way. “But you will come back, won't you?” he begs. “You'll see me again?”

Aris smiles, and in front of the entire bar, right at the very center of the crowd, she takes his hand, slowly, and lifts it to her mouth. Her lips brush over his knuckles and he feels his stomach twist and jolt. Her lips are like nothing he's ever imagined, velvet soft, and he feels her breath on his hand.

“Gob,” she says, “I promise.”

 


	5. Fifteen Years a Slave

She promised. She _promised,_ but why is it still taking her so long to come back?

True, she did say that she was going all the way to Rivet City, but... surely that wouldn't take more than a few days at most? And it's already been a full week.

Gob is depressed. He doesn't think that she's dead this time, but he's beginning to fear that she just doesn't care enough to come back right away.

“Missing your girlfriend?” Nova teases. Of course, she had seen Aris when she kissed his hand—kind of hard to miss a spectacle like that—and was just as amazed at everyone else by the changes in the tiny girl. To have seen that girl turn from a scared Vaultie into a full-fledged woman...

Unfortunately, now that she knew that Aris was of age, it left her to be able to tease him relentlessly. Moriarty's reaction had been far worse. Having seen a smoothskin willing to touch him, the Irishman figured that Gob needed to be taken down a peg. Several times a day.

“Girlfriend?” _Shit._ He'd overheard Nova, who flashes Gob a sympathetic look as Moriarty scowls at them. “Don't be filling his head with that nonsense, Nova dear. The corpse is full of himself enough already. Gob! Git yer ass in gear, boy! This table's filthy!”

Gob hurries over with a wet cloth—Moriarty aims a kick at his back and Gob drops to the ground, groaning. “Stupid, clumsy, lazy _meatbag!_ Git off the floor! _Now.”_

“Yes sir,” Gob says, tasting blood from where his teeth had smacked into the side of his mouth. He stands as quickly as he can manage, and limps to the table. Christ. The back of his leg is aching. _Moriarty's aim is never off,_ he thinks, grimly.

The rest of the day runs together similarly, a constant repetition of beatings and insults, all while trying to do his job. After closing, Gob sags to the ground, and Moriarty does nothing but snort and stalk away, shutting himself into his office.

Nova kneels by him. “Gobbie, sweetheart, are you okay?”

She doesn't quite touch him, but her hands are hovering over him, and that gesture is enough for him to be thankful to her. Nova is kind, almost unbearably so. Always encouraging him, soothing him, but always from a distance.

“I'm... I'm okay,” he mumbles, and touches the swollen bruise on his face from when Jericho took a drunken swing at him. “I just... wish that Aris would come back.”

 

_“I say I'll care forever... and I mean forever...”_

Billie Holiday's aching song is playing on the radio again, and Gob lets out a long, sad sigh. He'd always liked Three Dog's musical selection, but it seems like all he wants to play anymore are jazzy love ballads. Just an hour ago, he'd played _We'll Meet Again,_ which had made Gob's heart seize up. _If she walks in during this song,_ he had promised himself, _I'm gonna kiss her right on the mouth._

But of course, she didn't.

_“Crazy he calls me...”_

“At this point I'd almost rather be listening to President Eden,” Nova says, looking at him from her spot in the corner. It's early evening, soon to be time for the regulars to come pouring in. “If you keep sighing like that, you'll blow the saloon down.”

“I can't help it,” he groans. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“Rivet City's a long way,” Nova reminds him. “I wouldn't be surprised if it takes her a long time to finish her business there. So, what you _can_ do is have a little more patience.”

Jericho steps into the room, their first customer in a few hours, and Nova flutters her lashes at him. “Hey, baby. You looking for some fun?”

“I wouldn't say no,” the ex-raider says, rubbing his chin. “Can I put it on my tab?”

“Hah,” Nova smirks, “Is that all I am to you? Cheap fun? Don't be such a brute, Jericho.”

He grins. “Joking! I'm joking, baby doll. I've got the caps right here. Come on, sit down with me and have a drink.”

He reaches out and runs his thumb over Nova's lips, which curve into a smile. “Alright. Bring a bottle of whiskey over for us, won't you, Gob?”

“Unopened,” Jericho grunts. “Don't want you spittin' in it while we aren't looking.”

“I wouldn't do that to Nova,” he mutters under his breath, “but you, jackass, I'd do a lot more than spit.”

“Eh?” Jericho calls.

Gob glances over his shoulder from the selection of alcohol. “Oh, sorry, sir. Was there a specific brand in mind?”

“Whiskey, you dumb fuck!”

 _That's not a_ brand, _shitbird,_ he thinks, but sighs and hefts up a bottle of Jim Beam. If Nova's drinking too, he wants it to be something nice.

“And a Nuka-Cola for me, please,” a voice says pleasantly, and he bangs his head on the top of the cupboard as he leaps to his feet.

Across the bar, clear as day, is a tiny woman with a pixie cut and twin pistols.

“Aris!” he exclaims. He knows he looks foolish, grinning at her, lit up like a little kid on Christmas morning, but he can't help himself. “You're back!”

She hops up onto the barstool. “I promised, didn't I? Ugh. They need to make these seats midget-friendly.”

He laughs. “You're not a _midget.”_

“I'm under five feet tall,” she points out. “Barely. But still.”

She stubs her cigarette out in the ashtray, and Gob stares at her hungrily. Drinking her in. The slope of her shoulders. The lean muscle in her torso. Her small finger tapping the counter, blood and dirt caked under her nails.

"How have you been?" he asks, eagerly.

"Grand," she says. "Found out that my dad was on his way to some place way west of here. Thought I'd stop in on my way over."

"I'm glad. I missed ya, smoothskin."  _More than you know. More than I_ want  _you to know._ "You're the only good thing in this town. So don't get yourself killed out there looking for him, alright?"

Aris grins, her eyes sparkling. "I'm a tougher girl than that. I've already killed two Super Mutant Behemoths. Did I tell you that?"

"No, but I heard it on the radio," Gob rasps. He shakes his head. "I can't believe you. You've got bigger stones than half the men in the wasteland."

The phrase comes out of him without a second thought; it's the kind of thing he'd say to Nova. He risks a glance at Aris, horrified and afraid that she might be offended by him saying something like that; _she isn't saying anything?!_

"Uhm! Not, not to suggest you  _have_ - _"_

"Gob," Aris says, laughing. "I get it. It's an expression."

He stands there lamely, looking pained, and finally pushes the Nuka-Cola across the counter to her. What an idiot. Why is it that he always stumbles over his words when he sees her? He probably couldn't have said anything dumber if he'd tried. But  _that_ only gets him thinking about really stupid things he could say, like confessing his feelings for her, or telling her that he'd do anything to be petted and touched by her all day-

"Gob?"

He starts. "Uh. Yeah?"

"You've talked about your moms before," Aris says, a faraway expression on her face. Her lips part as she takes a sip of Nuka, and Gob tries not to focus on the way that her lips wrap around the stem of the bottle. He blinks and looks a bit to his right, unwilling to look away from Aris herself, and instead watches the perspiration on the bottle run down her fingers and drip onto the floor. "Do you have a dad?"

"Just as a smoothskin," he says, shrugging. "Why?"

"Do you miss him?"

He shrugs. "Sorry, kid. If you're looking to vent about your old man, there's not much I can say to sympathize with you. Sure, I miss him. But not much. Once you turn into a ghoul, you figure out how to say goodbye to your old life pretty quickly. Especially when it's your own pa kicking you off the family farm with a loaded .22."

"Damn!" Aris cries. "What a bastard!"

He smiles, pleased to have roused her anger. "Well, it does rank up there with what your dad did. Leaving you with a bunch of killers."

"Mm. He didn't know, though. He never would have left me if he'd known what was going to happen." Aris pauses. "I'm sorry about your dad, though. He should have given you a chance. At least locked you up somewhere until he knew you weren't going to go feral."

Gob sighs. "Yeah... well... it's in the past. Besides, he's probably dead by now, and if he hadn't forced me out, I'd never have met my moms. And with them, I don't have to worry about them dying. Least, not of old age."

"It must be nice."

Gob snorts, more amused by the fact that the wistful tone in her voice sounds genuine. "I bet you're the only smoothskin who feels that way."

"It's just... I don't want it to ever be over. Dad teaching me about science, or encouraging me. Healing up my scrapes. Showing me how to use a gun." A sad little smile flits across her face. "Piggyback rides when I was eight years old. He was the best dad in the world. Even if I die, I want there to be someone like him in the world. Always."

For the first time, Gob is brave enough to reach across what feels like  _miles_ of countertop space, and rests his hand on top of hers. "There will be, Aris. There  _will be_. As long as there's people like you, there'll be people like him. Good inspires good, just like evil inspires evil. With what you do, cleaning out Super Mutants and saving people, you make it possible for there to be men like him. Men who have daughters like you."

Is... is she blushing? "Gob, I think that's the sweetest thing you've ever said."

His hand tightens instinctively, and belatedly realizes he's still got it on top of her hand; however, she only lifts her thumb and rubs it against his scarred hand. Gob feels himself melting, being pulled in towards her... staring at her soft mouth... her big blue eyes, the color of fresh clean water, or the sky on a perfect day... and she keeps  _touching him,_ such a tiny amount, but Gob feels his pants tighten regardless.

He wants her, so badly. Her lips, her body, her  _goodness._ He wants her soft smiles and her laughter and her fierceness. He wants the woman with the twin pistols and the spirit of a valkyrie.

“Hey, dumbass! Get over here with the whiskey, alright?”

 _Shit._ He'd completely forgotten about Jericho. He rushes to the ex-raider's side with the Jim Beam, pouring it in two separate glasses, then leaves the bottle on the table, as Jericho had requested.

“Watch this,” he hears, and if he hadn't been distracted by the other locals beginning to enter the saloon, hadn't been rushing to get back to _Aris,_ he might have been able to stop it from happening.

There's a snag, a dizzying rush, and then an explosive _smack._ Gob finds himself on the floor, groaning, the ceiling swimming in and out of focus. Distantly, he can hear Jericho guffawing, some of the locals laughing along with him. Moriarty is shouting something, and he's kicked in the side, once, sharply.

“He's down for the night,” Gob can hear him saying, anger reverberating underneath his cheerful tone. “Guess you're all sorts of proud of yourself, aren't ye? Now what am I supposed to do, serve these people myself?”

“Gob,” he hears a woman say. “Come on, sweetie, get up.”

He pries his eyes open, and Aris swims into view. He nods, slowly, curls up around his knees, and pushes himself up—he staggers, rests his hands on the bar. As bad as a split lip and a possibly broken nose bridge might be, he's had worse. His head might be foggy now, and his body aches, but it's nothing that'll last for more than a week.

The rational part of his mind is glad that Aris does not touch him again. In front of so many people, helping him now would destroy her reputation. Especially since she had kissed his hand before. Gob isn't an idiot. He knows how things worked in this town. They'd think she was insane, some kind of... of deviant, and they'd shun her. No matter what Three Dog said on the radio.

But the inner parts of him hurt, and he winces and presses his hand to his side as he feels the knot forming where Moriarty had kicked him.

His heart hurts much worse.

Beaten. Defeated. And in front of his smoothskin, the pretty little firebrand who talks about killing and looting with as much carelessness as she mentions the weather. What must she think, seeing him laid low like this?

Pathetic.

“Gob,” Aris says, and he shakes his head.

“Leave me alone,” he growls, and trudges over to the stairs, ignoring the snickering, Nova's sympathetic eyes, the tinny music coming from the radio like a cheerful mockery.

“One hundred and twenty caps, right?” he hears Aris ask.

“Eh?”

“For his room.”

“You-”

“He took care of me, I'm going to take care of him,” she says firmly, and he can hear her rummaging in her bag for the money.

Gob doesn't wait, only shoulders his way past the door and into his room. He'd lock her out—if his door _had_ a lock. _I'm too tired for this. Please, Aris, just leave me alone. Don't come up here and look at me and speak to me... tempting me... I just want to sleep._

He falls onto his bed, and before long, he hears her footsteps on the stairs, and then pausing outside his door. “Gob?”

“Go away,” he says, his voice muffled by his pillow, but she's already through the door.

Her footfalls are quiet, tentative, and she pauses by his side. Gob squints an eye open, turning his head just the slightest—what is she doing?

Oh. _Oh._ His eyes close and he lets out a long breath as Aris's fingers run over the back of his head—threading through the patches of his hair, gentle and soothing over peeling burns, and then pressing in harder on the thick scar tissue. He melts into her touch, his mouth opening, and a shudder overtakes him when her fingers trail down his neck.

“Ah...” Gob snaps his mouth shut, his heart pounding, and tenses up. Idiot. _Idiot!_ How could he be stupid enough to let down his guard? The sound he'd just made was so obviously erotic and aroused that he couldn't have made his feelings any clearer than if he just whipped off his pants and waved his dick in her face.

He's preparing himself for her disgusted fury—but all he feels is her hand pressing into his back. She sits down beside him. Did... did she not hear him? Gob knows that the pillow muffled his lust-filled moan, but could that have been enough to keep her from noticing?

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Uh... yeah,” he says, still not turning his head. Dear god, if he has to look at her face, see her in his bed again, _knowing_ that she's twenty years old, and having been pining for her so long... His control is not at all going to be as strong as the last time she was up here.

“You were _bleeding,”_ she says.

“Not the first time that's happened,” he mumbles.

“You're kidding. Moriarty lets you get knocked around like that?”

“Kid... most of the time, he's the one who's doing it.”

“...why? You're his employee, he can't-”

“Hah, he can't? Try telling him that, or all the other goddamn smoothskins in this town. No one cares.” He pauses, and then grits his teeth.

 _Employee..._ she actually thought that he was here by choice? She didn't realize that he's nothing more than a slave?

...Should he tell her? What would she think? She's hardly mentioned freeing slaves; it's apparently not anything that she goes out of her way to do. She's always been more concerned with finding her father. And Gob's no fool. If she finds out, there's a good chance that she might stop treating him as nicely. After all, a slave is a slave.

“It's not right,” Aris says. “Gob—if I could—I would take you with me. But ghouls aren't allowed in Rivet City, and Bigtown is too dangerous. There's no other place that you could be safe.”

He sighs. “Thanks, kid. I appreciate the sentiment.”

Maybe Aris didn't really mean it, didn't actually care enough to escort his sorry ass across the wasteland to some far-off city, but he's grateful that she said it. Gives him something to dream about when she's away.

“Although... hey, Underworld, right? Isn't that where you came from? Is that place safe?”

“Listen...”

“Oh no, they didn't kick you out, did they?”

 _Better sooner rather than later, right?_ “Aris, it's... not that simple. I'm enslaved—or, as Moriarty likes to say, 'indebted'. If you try to take me out of here, he'll send out men to kill us before we're a mile away.”

He lays there, silently, on his side now. He can hear Aris tapping her foot, and then a clicking as she presses buttons on that odd machine she wears on her arm.

“And Simms allows this?” she asks, eventually.

“Everyone's paid off,” he says. “Everyone except for the Stahl family and a couple others. Even Simms is forced to listen to Moriarty, because no one's gonna obey Simms if he stands up against him. Forget about it, kid. I appreciate what you do for me, but there's only so far you can go, right?”

“No!” she snaps. “I'm not going to accept that. I _can't._ When I find my dad, I want him to know that I've done everything I could to help people. I can't just _walk by_ and ignore _slavery,_ of all things. He raised me to be a better person than that.”

“This isn't the Vault!” Gob retorts, sitting up, irritation making him brave enough to look her in the eye. “Do you know what they do to people like you? They won't bother with anything fancy. Either you'll get shot out in the wastes like a dog, or they'll break your spirits and make you Nova's coworker. And if not here, then it's bound to happen sometime, in some other godforsaken place.”

Silence.

Gob takes a long, slow breath, his eyes blazing, glaring down at the little girl on his bed. “And me? I'll be lucky if Moriarty takes me back. Luckier yet if they just kill me and be done with it.”

“Don't say such a horrible thing! You can't mean that!”

She's right—he doesn't. Gob still harbors dreams of leaving Megaton behind, of the celebration that he and Nova will have when Moriarty finally dies, of returning to Underworld and being greeted by his mother with a tearful smile.

But it's also true that if he lets Aris take him away, and they _do_ get caught, there are many, many things that Moriarty could do to him. Terrible things. Beatings that he doesn't dare imagine.

At the deepest level, though, and in the simplest words: he doesn't think that it could ever work. Not with his luck. The only things waiting would be pain and enslavement.

“Mean what? Dying? You think that's any worse than living in this miserable world? Look around, dammit! There's too much! What do you think you can fix? Are you gonna bring food to all the starving kids in the world? Heal the radiation poisoning of every random traveler? Don't make me laugh.”

“Stop it,” she hisses. “You're so goddamn cynical and pessimistic that you can't even stand to have someone try to help you?”

“No. Not when it's going to do nothing but get both of us killed. This is _the way things are,_ Aris! I'm a slave! Nova's a whore! We work and work and work, and eventually, we'll give up and die. You can't help anyone. You can't even find your own father!”

It's a low blow. He sees Aris's jaw working, as she nods, mulling over the insult, and then asks, “And that's your view of life, is it? Just violence and slavery and death?”

“Yeah. That's how the world works. Only people who don't understand that are stupid _smoothskins_ who don't know how to mind their own fucking business,” he growls.

“Fine,” she says, and stands up. “Sorry for trying to help you. Forget I said anything. You can sit here and mope around, while I'll find someone else to save. And maybe by the time I'm gone and buried, you'll have another 'smoothskin' to pester you. I hope the next one isn't as dumb as I was.”

Aris is already standing by the door—Gob opens his mouth to say something else, he isn't sure what—and then it slams shut between them.

And just as suddenly as she waltzed into his life, she's gone.

 


	6. One Night Stand

_“All or nothing at all_   
_Half love never appealed to me_   
_If your heart never could yield to me_   
_Then I'd rather have nothing at all...”_

Billie Holiday. Again. It's not quite as terrible as listening to _Crazy He Calls Me_ for the thousandth time, but hearing her voice only reminds him of Aris, especially since a week ago he'd heard Three Dog put on _Strange Fruit,_ introducing the artist as the Lone Wanderer's 'absolute favorite performer'. Explains why he'd started playing her songs so often, as if he were nothing more than a station celebrating her greatest hits.

“Hey, kids. Three Dog here, with more news for the wasteland. Apparently, the Lone Wanderer was seen killing her third Super Mutant Behemoth! I can't say I'm not impressed, but if I were her I'd be a bit more concerned about running _away_ from the big green monsters with guns instead of _towards_ them.”

There's a slight pause, as if Three Dog expects to hear the laughter of his audience, and Gob imagines a faceless, distant announcer grinning at his own quip. “With that in mind, don't try _too_ hard to emulate Miss 101—you might not be lucky enough to live to talk about it. This is Three Dog! _Aoooo!”_

 _And there it is._ The reminder. Aris has left him for good, and he can't blame her. In fact, it's a surprise that she didn't leave him a long time ago, repulsed by his disgusting leers and constantly clenched hands, itching to feel her soft skin again. She's out in the world. Saving people, just like she'd promised to do.

And Gob had spat on her dreams.

The bar is emptying, the patrons taking note of the time—ten minutes until closing. Gob is already mopping the floor behind the bar, careful not to miss a single inch of floor. He'd rather focus on his task than think about Aris.

Maybe he should just forget about her. Go back to lusting over Nova—however embarrassing that might be for the two of them, it can't be as bad as the hurt he feels when he thinks of the Lone Wanderer, right?

As he passes Nova, she clears her throat, a little awkwardly. He turns to face her, and although she looks directly at him, her smile is crooked, uncomfortable.

“Good work today,” she says. “I guess you'll head up to bed then, after we're done?”

“Yes,” he answers, cautiously. That's what he's done for the past fifteen years, after all... why is she asking, when she has his routine memorized as clearly as he knows hers?

“When you do, can you be a little more quiet? I need more sleep than you do, you know, and the last thing I want to listen to while I'm trying to sleep is you calling Aris's name.”

Aris.

He jerks back, horrified, his stomach lurching. _I—I was heard?_ He doesn't need explanation to know what she's talking about. He's tried to hold himself back, stifle his breathing and sighs while his hand pleasures himself, but lately he's found himself mouthing her name as he comes.

Well. Maybe a little more than mouthing it. Moaning it. Having nothing to amuse himself save for a few books and a healthy imagination... well, his pasttimes are hardly surprising.

“Gob,” she says patiently, “the walls are paper-thin. You've been jerking it to Aris for the past five months. I didn't say anything at first, but it's literally every night now, and it needs to stop, okay? Please. For my sanity. Keep it down, or keep _it_ down.”

He ducks his head, cringing. “I—I'm so sorry.”

“You're lucky that Colin's such a heavy sleeper,” she grumbles.

He closes his eyes briefly, not wanting to imagine how _that_ conversation might go. “Me too. You should have said something earlier. As tempting as it might be to be rid of... of certain _feelings,_ I don't really want to be the world's first eunuch ghoul.”

“Awkward subject,” she says. "You know."

“I'll stop,” he promises, but he's not sure how he'll be able to control his lust without an outlet. With that thought souring his mood, he's even more aggravated and distressed when the door opens.

Customers? _Great,_ he thinks sourly.

“We're closed,” Nova says, her voice sultry. “If you want, though, you can say hi in the morning.”

 _Or not at all,_ he thinks. With how these past few weeks have been, he'd much rather be left alone, no matter how many interesting stories that Megaton's many visitors might have.

It's a caravan. It's easy for Gob to pick out the individual members—the hardened woman in the front is the trader, the tall man with black hair is one of two guards, and the shorter man with the gap-toothed smile is the second. They don't appear to be particularly intimidating, but Gob has to still himself regardless, tempted to take a step back in spite of himself. He's seen so many frightening travelers, but he's always surprising himself with how fearful he can be. The tall guard looks like he could smash Gob into a pulp.

“Oh,” the woman says, and her voice is soft and misty, like the voice that Nova uses when she's whispering in a man's ear. “But I wanted to stay the night.”

“That's one hundred and twenty caps per person,” Nova says, eyeing the three of them, “but my bed's only big enough for three. One of you will have to be fine without service-”

“Is that the kind of inn this is?” the woman asks. “You're a whore?”

Nova doesn't flinch. “Yes, I am.”

The trader's eyes drift from Nova to Gob, and her fingers go up to her lips, and she stares, her eyes glazed but intent. It makes him squirm.

The woman points. “What about him?”

“Me?” Gob blinks. “I'm the bartender.”

She continues on as if she hadn't heard him. “How much does he cost? Per night.”

Gob steps back instinctively, and he hears a short laugh. _Moriarty._ He didn't think he'd ever be glad to see that awful man coming up to him, but as his boss steps out of the office, he finds that there's a first time for anything.

“Welcome to my saloon—or, in this case, maybe I should call it my brothel? You're not seriously inquiring, are you?” Moriarty is grinning, and Gob knows that it's more at his expense than hers. The thought that someone would want a ghoul? Laughable.

The woman is still staring at Gob. “Everyone has a price, Mr...”

“Colin Moriarty,” he says. “The ghoul you're so interested in is Gob.”

“Gob,” she repeats. “I want him to be my pet.”

He feels ill.

Moriarty's grin widens, and he throws his arm around Gob's shoulders, who flinches. “Well now! Unsavory to be sure, but we all have our vices. And since we're being so remarkably honest, I'll let you know that mine is money.”

“Then he has a price.”

“All things have a price, my dear.”

“I'll pay double the rate for him,” the trader says.

“Two hundred and forty caps?” Moriarty scoffs. “For this strapping lad? He's a young ghoul. Strong and hardy. Do you think he's going to cost so little? How many like him have you seen in the wastelands?”

The woman cocks her head. “Few. I see your point.”

There's a long silence.

“Five hundred caps,” she says, lazily. “For one night. I won't go any higher.”

“Sold,” Moriarty says, and pushes Gob forward.

“Mr. Moriarty!” Gob cries, suddenly finding his voice. “You can't be serious-”

The Irishman shrugs. “Show her a good time, lad. When are you going to get another chance?” He leers. “I doubt you feel anything down there anymore, but at least you'll have one thing crossed off your list, eh? Bragging points if nothing else.”

“I'm not-” he protests, and that's when the trader grabs his arm, her glassy eyes fixed on his peeling skin.

“I'm not patient,” she murmurs.

He gulps.

“Show me your room,” she says, still very quiet and direct. “Please.”

Gob leads her upstairs, crestfallen. What else can he do?

 

The trader closes the door.

“Uhm,” Gob says nervously, watching her remove her shirt, “What's your name?”

“Melinda,” she answers. If he's going to... uhm... bang her, he should know her name, right? The suddenness of this is too much, too fast. Gob doesn't know what to do, and the trader takes advantage of his distraction. She's dressed in a thin white undershirt, her hard nipples showing through the fabric, and she moves towards him. “Lay down.”

Gob glances behind himself, at the bed, and bites at his lip nervously. This was the moment he had been waiting his entire life for, right? He's spent _decades_ trying to lose his virginity, and this is a fantastic, unbelievable chance—right in front of him is a crazy smoothskin with swollen lips and hungry eyes.

Melinda doesn't ask again, but pushes him down, hard. He falls backwards with a yelp, and is struggling to right himself, wanting a little more control over the situation, but her hips come down on him, her legs wrapping around his waist. Heat sears his groin, and he feels himself hardening.

Gob is already hearing cries from Nova's room—the two men must have taken the opportunity to bed Nova together. _Paper-thin walls,_ he thinks, and his stomach lurches.

_Aris._

He wants...

Melinda leans over his chest, tugging at his shirt, and Gob hastily pulls it down.

“I don't know if I want this,” he says uncertainly. “I mean, I'm flattered, but-”

“Shh,” Melinda murmurs, and kisses him, her lips damp against his flesh. Her mouth is pressed against his belly, having pulled his shirt back up, and he shudders when her tongue flicks his skin.

He feels sick.

Something is wrong. He doesn't know what it is, but this is nothing like what he'd imagined, nothing like the intense desperate longing that he'd felt for Aris and Nova.

Her hips start rutting against him, and his cock presses into his clothes, uncomfortably hard, and he swallows bile. _I don't want this,_ he finds himself thinking, incredulous. _I don't want this!_

Why won't his body listen to him? When she presses down on him, a little bit harder, he has to grit his teeth to keep himself from shouting at her to leave him alone, to let him go, but his traitorous loins are aching for relief. But at the same time he's repulsed, turned off, and very simply frightened.

He opens his mouth, once. Shuts it. He's not used to asking someone to do anything... _ever._ Even when he lived in Underworld, he was never the kind of man to request something from anyone. Let alone a pretty young smoothskin with the eyes of a killer.

“Stop,” he whispers, then repeats it louder. “ _Stop.”_

Melinda leans back, straddling him, and she glares down at him with hooded eyes. “I paid for you,” she says. “I've never had to _pay_ to sleep with a ghoul before. You should feel honored that I want you so badly.”

He shudders. “You paid _Moriarty._ I'm... I'm not a whore, alright? I'm a virgin,” he says, pleading. “Please let me go. I'll get the caps back from Moriarty, please, just _stop.”_

His eyes widen when she unsheathes a knife from her hip.

“I don't take no for an answer,” she whispers, and trails the blade from his cheek down his neck, pressing lightly against his throat, until he feels a sharp prick and a thin trickle of blood. His breath huffs out, hard and terrified, panicking. “If you aren't willing to give, then I'm forced to take.”

And then she slits his shirt down the middle, and in the ensuing struggle, she manages to tear it off. It's only a shirt, Gob knows, but after the shreds are on the floor, he feels naked in front of her hungry eyes and starving hands. She lets out a long sigh of wonder and her thumb rubs over his nipple.

 _No. No! I don't—please, I'll do anything, just stop-_ Gob swallows the words, knowing that they're useless. Is this really how it's going to happen? He could break down into tears and laughter, and cry at the foolishness of his situation.

He might not have resisted if he'd never met the Lone Wanderer. He would have let this woman have her way with him, confused, scared, and ashamed. He would have let her kiss his body and defile it. And when it was over, he would have been left feeling sated but uncertain, and would resolve to try to never think about it again.

But that was before he met the Lone Wanderer.

When she reaches forward again, his eyes dart to the knife, switched from her right hand to her left. _Non-dominant hand,_ he thinks.

If there's a time to fight back, it's now. Before it's too late.

Gob catches her wrist as she reaches forward, locking it in place, and snags her other hand before she knows what's going on; Melinda hisses and twists her hand, and despite his best efforts, the blade cuts into his arm. He flinches, but holds steady.

“You're a fool,” she snarls, and he shakes his head.

“I'm sorry,” he says. He means it, mostly—he rolls his hips, wriggling out from underneath her while she struggles, and narrowly avoids a knee to the crotch. _Free!_ But Melinda is snarling like a crazed feral, spitting, her eyes wild and furious, and still very much a threat.

“Let me go,” he says, “and I won't have to hurt you. Please.”

She lets out an angry scream. Gob winces, and using the last of his strength, he throws her off his bed. She hits the floor hard, the dagger clattering beside her, and he pauses. _Did I hurt her?_

Well. No time to be wondering _that._ Melinda is growling, already grabbing her knife, and begins to stand. Gob feels the breath catch in his throat. _If she catches me, I'm going to die._ He is oddly certain of this.

He flees the room.

 

It's a few minutes past midnight. Gob is panting, having never run so fast in his life. He'd tried the door to the Church of Atom, certain that they would be sympathetic to a ghoul, but it was locked—he would have torn the door down if that's what it took, but Melinda was already on her way to intercept him. He'd been forced to run, zig-zagging through Megaton until he realized that he wasn't going to lose her.

And that is why he finds himself standing in the wastelands in the middle of the night, unarmed and shirtless, absolutely lost.

“Dammit,” Gob sighs, and sinks onto the ground. After so much terror and adrenaline pounding through his veins, he can hardly muster up fear from the sight of a mole rat trundling around two dozen meters away.

At least Melinda isn't following him anymore. He'd lost her a good half hour ago, when he'd sprinted past a raider's encampment. He'd heard bullets whistling around him, and left Melinda to fend for herself—heavens knows she's more than capable of handling it.

Gob shifts position, nestling more firmly into the tall grass. Hopefully he'll be left alone tonight—he knows that his location is dangerous, but where else can he go? The night is pitch-black, and he's hopelessly lost. He _thinks_ he may have run west, but can he really know that for sure? He hasn't left Megaton in fifteen years.

He feels sick. Aris had offered to help him escape, and he'd turned it down. Now here he is, without a guide or a weapon. He'd give his left hand to have her with him right now.

If nothing else, food and water isn't a big concern. He can survive without either, although he personally believes that if he goes for too long without, he'll go feral. And, being a ghoul, he won't be attacked by ferals or Super Mutants.

Being shirtless, though... that'll make him a target for all humans in the wastes. No sane ghoul would dare go around with less than perfect clothing, terrified of being targeted by wary travelers.

It's at this moment that he notices, quite far off, the lonely orange light of a fire. Too far off along the flat expanse of the wastes for him to tell who might be there, or how many people by the fireside. But whomever it might be, they're human, and that's enough to bring Gob to his feet.

Maybe... maybe... it might be someone willing to listen to him, someone who won't shoot the instant they see him.

His eyes scan the tiny campsite far ahead of him, searching for figures outlined in orange. Nothing. He grits his teeth, glances around him, and quickens his pace.

Gob reaches the fire and glances around. It's clearly a campsite, with rocks piled around the flames with care, but the party responsible is missing.

Where could they have gone? They hardly would have left their camp, not in the middle of the night, not with all the monsters that roam around under the pitch black blanket of darkness, only the stars to guide their way. Too many predators. Too much danger.

Unless...

The back of his neck prickles. He has a sudden, awful foreboding—

“Hello?” he calls, as loudly as he dares.

There's a terrible snarl, and a beast lunges out of the darkness towards him. He's thrown back, claws digging into his chest, rancid breath hissing in his face. Gob screams, and the yao guai roars in response.

“Muir! _Stad.”_ Out of the darkness comes a mountain of a man, a dark-eyed, swarthy-skinned traveler with an unshaven face. A hunting rifle is slung over his shoulder.

The yao guai rumbles in response and steps away. Gob shudders in fear, watching the mutated animal licking his blood off of its claws.

“Ne'er approach a man at night,” the stranger warns, and sits down. “Ye 'specially should know better than that, _ghoul.”_

“S-sorry,” he stammers, sitting up and looking at himself. Fortunately, none of the cuts seem particularly deep. He should heal from them within a few days, shorter if he finds some radiation. “You... you don't happen to have a spare shirt, do you?”

The man snorts, rummages around in his bag, and tosses a swathe of fabric at him. Gob pulls it on gratefully, and frowns. The hem reaches mid-thigh.

“Thanks,” he rasps. “I mean it. I wouldn't have blamed you if you shot on sight. That's what most smoothskins would have done, anyway.”

The man barks out a laugh. “Shots a' night? Out in the center of the muties' territory? Wouldn't have risked ma life tae kill a bogey.”

Gob vaguely recognizes the last word as some kind of insult, mostly because of the emphasis the man puts on it, but he's fascinated. “What sort of accent is that?”

The man snorts. “Whit accent?”

“I... nevermind. Is this area really so dangerous?”

“Killed two muties just an hoor ago. An' ah saw a Behemoth, roamin' ten miles north. Dangerous, eh? Whit d'ye think?”

“Why are you out here, then?”

The man gives him a dangerous grin. “Cos here is whaur the caps are. Whit about ye, bogey? All alone, n' aff-naked?”

“I got lost,” Gob says. “Well. Attacked, lost my shirt, and then lost _myself_ trying to get away. Where are we?”

He snorts. “Middle o' nowhere. Haven't stumbled intae anyone since Girdershade. 'Cept fer muties and ghouls.”

“Girdershade? Either you've come a long way or I have.”

The giant of a man scratches his face. “Eh. Been a few days. Headed to Megaton next.”

“Are you?” Gob asks, nervous at the comment. “I've just come from there.”

“Escaped slave?”

Gob is on his feet before he knows what he's doing.

“Sit back down, bogey, ah'm nae the type o' man who'd turn ye in,” the giant says with a grunt. “Though that explains why yer out without a weapon nor a shirt. Ah'm a scavenger, mostly, n' a killer for hire when need be.”

He gives Gob a long look, as if taking his measure in the firelight, and then says, “Name's Ewan. N' the ol' bear is Muir.”

“Gob,” he answers, relieved. “Thank you, sir. I'd probably be dead by now if I hadn't stumbled upon your camp.”

Ewan shrugs. “Nae 'n mutie land. Nae for a bogey, least. Worst that could get ye would be a mole rat, n' they're easy enough tae run off.”

He feels his mouth twist into a wry smile. “Thanks for the optimism, but I'm glad I found another person. I would have gone mad if I didn't find someone to help me out—gone mad or died.”

“Or slaved,” Ewan points out.

Gob nods, and sighs. “Is it okay if I stick around? At least for tonight?”

Ewan narrows his dark eyes, considering. “Listen, ye can stay fer a good while, ah suppose, s'long as ye can pull yer own weight. We run across any bogies, n' it's up tae ye t'kill 'em. Ah won't risk mahself if ah've got a ghoul tae do it.”

Gob relaxes. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that, I think—but, I've never killed anyone before. Not even a feral ghoul or a raider.”

“Not hard,” Ewan says, then nods to himself. “Take this.”

He flips a knife out of his belt. Hands it to Gob hilt-first. He's taken aback by how heavy it is, the weight of it in his hands. It's a foot long, and thick. Not anything with a real use except in battle—Gob has a sudden image of Ewan roaring and slicing upwards into the belly of a raider, eviscerating his enemies instantly.

“I-I don't think,” Gob says desperately, “that I'm very good at close-range combat. Don't you have a gun that you could spare? A pistol, maybe?”

The man snorts. “An' trust ye with it?”

Gob falters. Well, he can't blame him. No one trusts ghouls. He's lucky that this man didn't kill him instantly, luckier yet that he's been armed by him. With a knife, he at least has a chance. And he won't have to worry about bullets.

Ewan says, “Now that ah think about it, there's a bogey that's been following me aways. Quiet, sneaky. Think it's a feral, not sure. Should be about a half-mile away. Go take care of it, and ah'll see about gittin' ye a better weapon.”

Gob frowns, but nods. He can't pass up the chance to get a gun—this might be his only shot at survival out here. And he needs to do whatever he can to prove his worth to this man.

He needs to survive—if nothing else, at least long enough to tell Aris that he's sorry.

 

 

 

 


	7. Debts

It's two hours before Gob can come to terms with what he'd just done—killing another ghoul. Feral, sure, but still close enough to sanity that it could stalk Ewan and Muir, smart enough to remember how to use a gun. Fortunately, it recognized Gob as its own kind and only watched as he approached, and only reacted in self-defense when he plunged the dagger right into its neck.

It's two days before Gob is forced to kill again, this time a much more feral ghoul. One that had surprised Ewan and Gob while Muir attacked a Super Mutant. The sounds of the yao guai shrieking and the mutie bellowing was enough to completely mask the sound of the ghoul's approach—but Gob saw it coming up behind Ewan. His mouth was too dry to croak out a warning, but he knew what was expected of him—and he killed the feral without a word.

It's two weeks before Gob is given his own gun. At the ruins of a pre-war cottage, Ewan stops to pick the lock on a safe. Pulls out a Desert Eagle and turns it over, thinking.

“Good gun,” he grunts, and without another word, hands it to Gob.

It's two months before Gob's body truly begins to harden and adapt to the wasteland, and he is finally able to appreciate his height and frame—muscle fills out his body, erasing any bit of lankiness that he may have had before. He is by no means as strong or powerful-looking as Ewan, but his chest is harder, his arms larger. He is able to walk with Ewan and the yao guai without tiring, and although he still looks around nervously, he knows that he is prepared for any situation that the wastes might throw at him.

Ewan never went through Megaton, dissuaded by Gob's story of escape, and instead heads on up to Bigtown. When they arrive, the residents are fending off a Super Mutant attack, and although the muties are outnumbered, Gob still finds himself laying in the dust, stunned. His shoulder is a mess of bloody cloth and shattered bone.

He had taken out two Super Mutants entirely on his own, more than he's ever done before, but as he delivered a final headshot on the mutie firing upon the town, another had smashed a sledgehammer into him.

Ewan had taken care of that one. It is impossible for Gob to scream in pain, let alone lift his gun; he feels like a broken toy, ripped in two. While he's grateful that Ewan killed the mutant before he could deliver a finishing blow, Gob has just enough sense left to wonder if it wouldn't have been better for him to be given a swift end. Surely he's dying. Surely a man can't experience pain this terrible and still survive.

Ewan peers down at him, laughs, and says, “Ye aren't as tough as ye think ye are, _charaid._ Best get ye to a doctor. Come on, right yerself up, that's it, bogey.”

He passes out before his companion has him half-way upright.

Gob finds himself sitting in an alarmingly bloodied office, with a young woman around Aris's age poking at the shards of bone. He's curled up in the chair, in the fetal position, with a strip of leather between his teeth, as he growls and screams.

“Shh,” the dark-skinned woman says. “Not much left now, and then I'll be able to use a stimpak. Come on, listen to me, focus on what I'm saying.”

Gob nods, gulping, sweat running down his back. If the girl is disgusted by touching him, a _ghoul_ , she doesn't say anything. She's certainly being much nicer than the situation calls for.

“I have a really good story, actually,” she says. “About the Super Mutants. I fought them too—at least, as well as I could, not that it did much. They just laughed at me and threw me into a sack. I thought I was dead for sure. None of us knew why the muties were taking us away, but we knew it wasn't going to be good—we were suspicious that they were eating the people that they stole.”

He flinches as her tools dig into his back, and he holds in a scream when she pulls a particularly large piece of bone out of his muscle and places it in the proper spot. Irradiated water drips into the wound, carefully binding the pieces of bone back together, and then the doctor moves on.

“It was me and Shorty—my name's Red, by the way—we were the ones that they'd decided to take. Shorty got taken down to the basement. That, apparently, was where they were going to butcher him. But me? They _liked_ me for some reason. They set me aside.” Red's voice goes low. “And they were going to turn me into one of _them.”_

Gob nods again, teeth gritted into the leather. He knows all about the kidnapping of humans by Super Mutants. That's the sole reason why they leave the ghouls alone—already having been mutated, the muties don't want or need anything from them, and besides, whatever they do to turn people into Super Mutants doesn't work on ghouls.

However, it doesn't stop them from trying to kill him when they see him with Ewan.

“But I had a little luck on my side,” Red continues. “And that luck came to me in the form of a little girl named Aris—Miss 101 to you, probably. That is, if you listen to GNR?”

Gob sits up at this, swearing as his muscles clench in pain. “I love Galaxy News Radio!” he exclaims, his indignation that she would ask such a question temporarily trumping his interest in hearing about Aris.

“Really?” Red's gloved fingers reach over and flick on the radio. Allan Gray's jazz plays low in the background, and Gob sinks down again, pleased to be able to hear Three Dog's channel again. It's been far too long.

Red continues, “I was about ready to laugh or cry when I saw her, I'm not sure which. She looked terrified, her face all white and scratched up, and she had a pistol in her hand—as if those could ever shoot through a mutie's thick skull! I'd never met an adult shorter than myself. I thought she was a kid at first.”

Her voice brightens. “But she proved me wrong. She promised to come back for me, told me to stay in my cell, and although I wanted to yell at her to just _get me out,_ she said I'd be safer locked up. And she _did_ come back, and with Shorty, no less.”

Red tosses down her surgical equipment, saying, “There! All done. Some more radiation, and you should be good to go.”

Gob sits up, stretching his arm. Sore, definitely, and in a lot of pain, but he can tell that the worst of the damage is fixed. “Thanks. And I mean it. I thought I was dead for sure. When was the last time you saw Aris?”

“Hm... about a week ago? She stops by a lot, especially since I give her treatment for free.” Red makes a face. “Honestly, I think it makes her more reckless. You wouldn't believe the injuries she comes in with. Concussions, broken bones, addictions... sometimes I think she lives off of adrenaline alone.”

He smiles, tightly. “That sounds like her.”

She pauses, maybe tipped off by something in his voice. “You... know her?”

“Mm. She's... well, she used to be a good friend of mine.”

“Used to be?”

“I said something that pissed her off,” Gob explains. “I haven't seen her since.”

Red frowns. “That's surprising,” she says. “Aris isn't really the type to hold grudges.”

That gives him pause. She isn't? “She made it sound as if she never wanted to see me again,” he says, cautiously. “It was very definitely meant to be a goodbye.”

Red raises her eyebrows. “What did you do to her?”

“I wouldn't let her help me,” he admits.

The doctor laughs, shaking her head, and unscrews the top off of a bottle of filthy water. It might be a trick of the light, but Gob thinks maybe he can see it glow. “Yeah, I can imagine that that would piss her off,” she says, and then the radio music fades out.

“Hey, kids, this is Three Dog, and you're listening to Galaxy News Radio.”

Gob perks up at this, attention fully-focused on the radio, and barely notices as Red pours the irradiated water over his shoulder. There's a hiss as his flesh knits back together.

“Unfortunately, I have some bad, bad news for you. Miss 101, our very own urban legend, has been looking for her dear old dad. I thought that last month, when I reported about her finding him, would have been the end of it—but it seems that her own story has to end in a tragedy. The Lone Wanderer's father is dead, killed by those Enclave bastards—yeah, I thought that they were just a myth too. But they're real, and they're certainly no friend of ours. You see any of them, you stay clear. Keep a lookout for the power armor.

“The Lone Wanderer, according to all reports, is safe,” Three Dog continues, and Gob breathes a sigh of relief. “But when the Brotherhood dropped off that info, they said that she'd already left the Citadel. Miss 101, wherever you are, godspeed. I hope you find something else worth fighting for.”

The radio falls to static, for a few long seconds, and then a pattering, cheerful tune starts up: _“Into each life, some rain must fall...”_

“Shit,” Red says, quietly. Her hands more more slowly, capping the half-empty bottle, and then fall to rest by her sides.

Gob looks down. _Aris..._ after all this time, this is how it ends? Her beloved father, dead? He remembers how she looked when she first came to the bar, with her eyes full of tears. Every time she's come to see him, she's chattered on about searching for her father, equal parts angry at his disappearance and excited about the clues to finding him.

He thinks of the little girl that she'd pretended to be, and the hardened, dangerous woman had returned as, and suddenly realizes that Aris is neither. She's something in between. Something small and fragile, a girl with a glass heart, but with a spine of steel and a spirit of flame. A lonely girl with hope and compassion, continuously walking the wastes, never truly finding what she's searching for.

And now her purpose is gone.

If there might ever be a time when  _she_ might need  _him,_ the moment is now.

Gob pulls his shirt back over his shoulder and buttons it. “What do I owe you?”

“For you? Nothing, if you really are friends with Aris. Besides, I didn't have to use that stimpak after all—the water was good enough, I think.”

Gob rubs his shoulder, then stretches his arm. She's right—there isn't even a trace of pain.

Red is smiling. “Shorty bottled it on our way back from Germantown Police HQ. He jumped down into a ditch and pulled out a bottle of this muck. Aris and I both said he was crazy, but he was insistent that we might be able to use it for something. I'm glad he was right.”

Well, he's certainly glad about that too.

Gob murmurs his agreement and then stands slowly, thinking. If it takes about a day—maybe three days if there's heavy fighting—to reach GNR from the Citadel, then... that means that Aris couldn't have gone far. Certainly not farther away than the places that she has already explored—after those trials, heading straight into uncharted territory would be unthinkable, and something that she would have done very slowly.

There's a chance, if she is leaving for good, that he might be able to catch her.

 

 

Ewan does not come with him.

“Couple'a months wit a ghoul is long enough for me, mate,” he says, shrugging. “An' ah'm not used to cutting about wit anyone else anyway. Do ma best alone.”

Gob points out that he's technically not alone, since he has his pet yao guai, but Ewan only laughs at him and rants something incomprehensible before walking away. Gob calls a farewell, and the man only lifts a hand in return, not looking back.

“That's not very friendly,” the kid that Gob assumes is Shorty says, watching the giant leave. “Ditching you like that?”

He shrugs. “It doesn't matter. Honestly, he went out of his way for me.”

When he'd had enough time to really think about it, he was amazed by how much Ewan had sacrificed for him. He hadn't split up the spoils of their finds evenly, but it had been fairly close. And he was always careful to give him just as much food as he ate himself. _And_ he trained him to use the knife better, as well as the gun. And if that wasn't enough, he'd talked to him in a low voice now and then, teaching him how to track prey, and how to hide from raiders if their numbers were too great. There was hardly ever any praise, and Ewan made no secret of his dislike for ghouls, but... he had helped him all the same.

Gob had thought that Aris was the only kind person in the wastelands.

He was wrong. Ewan, who'd taught him, and Red, who'd doctored him without asking for any kind of recompense. Even Shorty seems like a nice enough guy—coming up to a ghoul and complaining in Gob's defense was alright by his standards.

“I understand you're the one I should be thanking,” Gob rasps to Shorty. “Red said that you bottled up that irradiated water, right?”

The kid crosses his arms. “Yeah. It's a good thing we don't get too many ghouls, or else it would all be used up by now. The only people who come into Bigtown on a friendly basis are dying half the time.”

Gob isn't surprised. Having been roaming this area of the wastelands for the past two months, he's well-aware of how dangerous the land around Bigtown is.

“If I come back,” he tells Shorty, “I'll try to make sure it's for a social call and not to see your doctor.”

“Yeah, well... Feel free to stop by anytime you wanna kill some muties, injured or not. We can always use more guys like you around here.” Shorty pauses. “The only other person to help us without asking for anything in return has been Aris. The traders will kill mutants when they see them, but that's just so that they can get our caps. Not everyone around here's a big fan of ghouls, but you just tell me if anyone gives you a hard time, and I'll shut them the fuck up, okay? We owe you one.”

Gob smiles. It seems like an eternity ago that he'd had Jericho and Moriarty beating him, screaming insults in his face—decades since he'd been flattened by an angry drunk.

He wonders, for a moment, if he'll cower at the sound of his master's voice. If he ever hears Moriarty again, if he ever decides to even _look_ at that goddamn town again. Other than Aris, he's never had anyone offer to defend him.

It's... nice.

“I'll keep that in mind,” he says. He takes a moment to check his Desert Eagle and ammo, pats his side where the unmistakable weight of his knife rests. Other than his weapons, caps, and a small amount of food, he has nothing left; Ewan had taken everything else. He's thankful for this. He'll make better time if he has less to carry, less to keep track of.

Gob says goodbye to Shorty, then, and takes his first steps out into the wasteland—alone, but unafraid. It reminds him sharply of the time that he left Underworld, armed with a pistol then as well, overburdened with food and trinkets, proud and certain that he was more than capable of handling his own destiny without problems.

Back then, he'd had no destination and no experience. He'd gotten captured almost immediately. Had been bashed into the ground and beaten and stripped. Humiliated and bloodied. Gob had thanked Moriarty with grateful tears when he'd been bought.

He grits his teeth at the memory.

This time, though... he's ready.

 

 

...at least, he'd _thought_ that he was ready. After two days straight of slogging through grit and sand and dust and radioactive bogs, two days of fighting monsters and mutants, he finds himself somewhere outside the DC ruins.

It'd be nice if he knew exactly _where,_ but, without a handy little gadget like Aris has, he's got no real idea. He'd left DC behind him about an hour ago, far enough to know that he had probably passed close to the Citadel at some point, without having seen it. Of course he can tell by the position of the sun that he is currently facing the east, but other than that...

He wishes that he could have teleported right to the Citadel the instant Three Dog had said that she'd left. At least then he would have been able to question the Brotherhood (that is, if they didn't shoot him first) as to which direction she had gone. But now he has a good many days of travel in between them, with no idea as to whether she had decided to leave DC for good or not. She could be anywhere; Rivet City, Megaton, Underworld, even.

Gob sighs and checks his surroundings another time. Gray rock and stagnant radioactive water surrounds him; this area looks like the remnants of a farm, abandoned maybe forty years ago. It reminds him, a bit, of his old home when he was a smoothskin, and the similarities make him shiver. A rotting barn, where one or two Brahmin would have been housed... the small farmhouse, where a stern mother might be found sweeping the dusty porch as the father toiled in the fields with their son. Now, though, the farmhouse is caving in, and the fields are grown up with snarled weeds and dead grass.

He wonders if this might be what his own home looks like, far to the north, up in the place they used to call New York State. If it's abandoned as well, with broken windows and with nothing to hear but the sound of wind in the grasses.

_Clink._

Or... maybe the farmhouse isn't as abandoned as he'd thought.

Gob takes a moment to crouch, easing the Desert Eagle out of its holster. Goddammit. Enemies already? He'd better just leave, start heading west again. It's obvious that with the number of monsters and raiders he's had to kill that Aris hasn't been through this area. And kneeling in an empty field with nothing but a knife and a pistol isn't the greatest position to be firing on someone or something that has the advantage of the shelter of the house.

 _Retreat._ It's not shameful or cowardly. Even men like Ewan prefer quiet and silence over a dangerous firefight. Gob isn't sure what's ahead; it could be something as inconsequential as a Brahmin or a bloatfly; but he's not about to take a chance.

There's another _clink,_ the sound of a footstep on broken glass or bits of metal, and what sounds like a sigh. _A raider? A scavenger?_ It sounds like a man to Gob, with that deep exhalation coming from around the corner of the farmhouse, and there's a few more steps.

And then silence.

Gob pauses in his stealthy retreat, and holds his gun steadily, pointed directly at the juncture.

There's another low _whuff,_ and an icy bead of sweat trickles down along his spine. It does not sound like a human; its breathing sounds too bestial. Maybe a yao guai?

There's a snort, and Gob's face freezes into a rictus of horror as the beast behind the wall steps into sight. All of his muscles clench at once.

_Deathclaw._

 


	8. Think of Me

He's heard the stories. He doesn't need to have seen a Deathclaw before to know what one looks like. The curved horns, as sharp as swords and harder than steel; the nearly-bulletproof brown hide with purple undertones near the clawed hands and underbelly.

Once, a merchant had brought a hide in for sale, and Gob had taken a look over Moriarty's shoulder. Having been cleaned and oiled, the skin gleamed in the light, each scale like a diamond. When the old bastard had left, Gob risked a few questions: _what would you use it for? Why are the skins so valuable?_ Apparently, their hides are almost as tough as heavy armor and just as durable. Others might slice it to pieces and tool it into decorative lining on boots or coats; nothing like a bit of lizard skin to make a man seem dangerous.

Another merchant had brought in claws, filed down and carved into a set of beautiful throwing knives. And still others had dried organs and tinctures to sell to Doc Church and some of the old ladies of the town who believed in the mystical properties of the rare beast.

And now one is standing in front of him.

 _Whuff. Whuff._ It scents the air, and it is close enough that Gob can see its pupils dilate.

Shaking, he raises his pistol.

Without another moment's hesitation, the beast charges with a horrifying scream, talons raised. He fires multiple times, backpedaling as fast as he can, but it's like shooting a BB gun at a tank; it _might_ be doing damage, but to his terrified eyes it looks like they're glancing off the scales. How the hell is that _possible?_ How can there be a creature so powerful?

 _Click._ Shit—the gun is empty. Gob tries it once more, his knees weakening in fear as the Deathclaw nears, and then abandons the gun and turns on his heel. No use in carrying the gun now; he won't have time to reload, and even the tiniest bit of lost weight will help him to go faster.

Gob has never been more thankful for his stamina. He'd learned to push himself to the limit a long time ago, working under Moriarty, but he had despised his strength then, seeing it as a forced necessity. If he had done anything less than his very best, hadn't constantly pushed himself to the limits of exhaustion, Moriarty would have had him beat. He had been nothing but a beast of burden.

Sprinting, the wind rushing through his sparse hair, his lungs on fire, he almost wishes that Moriarty had worked him harder. _Almost._

The Deathclaw is still hot on his heels; he can hear its heavy footfalls behind him, the thin sound of its talons slashing at the air. _It's going to run me to the ground._ He realizes it with a sudden, grim certainty. _How stupid._ To come all this way... to have fought so hard for his freedom, to have spent so much time getting stronger, to have survived so much... all for nothing.

And it reaches him.

There's a flash of pain. Nothing much, nothing too agonizing, but it's the impact that catches him off-guard and makes him fall. The shiver of pain that he feels when he hits the ground, though, that's something altogether different. The air rushes out of his lungs and he takes in a rattling wheeze as he struggles for breath. His vision goes white and then fades back in with strange spots. His back is split open, warmth spreading over his armor.

The Deathclaw overshoots by a few feet and leaps over him; not that it matters. Gob is down, and he has a horrible suspicion that even if the beast leaves him alone, he'll bleed out regardless. _Dammit! I can't die like this! Not now, not before... Aris..._

He is not sure where he finds the strength, but some part of him pushes past his hurt and damaged body, stretching severed muscle and ligaments in order to reach for the evisceration knife on his left hip.

_Closer... closer... please..._

The Deathclaw screams its cry of victory and slashes down.

He almost has it out in time. His fingers fumble on the hilt, his body groaning and shaking with effort to twist to the side. He catches a glimpse of the Deathclaw above him, exultant, its beady eyes glittering with a cold intelligence, its talons inches away from impaling him-

_Bang._

The Deathclaw stumbles.

Gob blinks in surprise, watching the creature reel away from him, blood dripping from its face—a bullet had embedded just above its nose. It roars again, and thrashes blindly—there's another burst of gunfire and the Deathclaw steps back again, shaking its head at the bullets peppering its hide.

Gob would love nothing more than to turn tail and flee, but he has to force himself to stay on the ground. If he moves around too much, there's a good chance that he'll get shot by his unknown savior.

There's a pause, and the sound of reloading. No one calls out to him to see if he is okay; not that he expected it, but he wonders, briefly, if he's being rescued only to be killed by some bigot.

His rescuer reloads three more times, driving the Deathclaw back farther and farther. Gob twists a little to watch out of the corner of his eyes—he's half on his side, his back still screaming in agony, when the beast falls. It lands hard, its tongue lolling out, blood pouring from its wounds, and glares through reddened, filmy eyes. Another concentrated burst of fire causes it to snarl one last time, and fall limp.

Footsteps through dry grass. Gob rolls back, grunting at the feel of gritty earth in his wounds, and stares up at the sky. A few more moments, and as each one passes, he's aware that he is coming closer to either his salvation or his destruction.

The footsteps stop, just behind his head, and he hears the sound of a cigarette lighter. A long, smoky exhalation.

“Well,” a familiar voice says, and Aris, the Savior of the Wastes, sits down beside him. “Seems like you needed my help after all.”

 

* * *

 

 

Gob sits bolt-upright, despite the agony in his back. The pain brings tears to his eyes. “Aris— _shit!”_

“Roll over,” Aris says, and he's unnerved that she isn't smiling. “I have some irradiated water in my bag.”

He obeys her, groaning. “It'd better be pretty powerful stuff. This hurts like hell.”

He listens to the sounds of her unscrewing a bottle, and then a pause. Her soft breathing as she leans over him, and then the slow drip of water over his skin, washing away the dirt and knitting together the flesh. Gob does not break the silence, and she gives no indication that she wants him to.

At last, she stows the empty bottle in her bag, and Gob peeks up at her. She's still seated beside him, her head tilted back at the sky.

“So, tell me, ghoul,” she says, without looking down, “Why did you decide to leave Megaton?”

He blushes. “Uh...”

That's not exactly a story he's interested in relating to her. How on earth would _that_ go? Hearing about a young lady cutting his clothes off to have sex with _him,_ of all people—she'd laugh at him, laugh at the ridiculous thought that someone would want to at all, let alone be so desperate about it. And she'd be sickened at the thought of imagining him in such a scenario.

Who would want to think about a monster in bed?

“You know,” she says, “I went back. To Megaton, I mean.”

His mouth is dry. “You... you did?”

“About five weeks ago. When I asked about you, Moriarty glared, and Nova said that she wasn't sure what happened. She told me that you ran away with a woman.”

Gob doesn't know how to explain. He's afraid to speak, and more afraid to move from his position, prone, a wordless supplicant. He thinks that this must be what men must have felt like in the days of monarchy, pressed face-down into the dust. Silent.

Aris glances at him, and then lets out a small chuckle. “I have to admit, I thought that you were turning me down for different reasons. Since I'd been trying for awhile and gotten nothing, that maybe it was because I—well. Never mind about _that._ Just... people are surprising, you know? That I'd had the wrong idea about you all along. I'd thought that you were holding yourself back, but really... it was me.”

She shakes her head, and sighs. Wipes a hand across her face, cleansing her face from dust, and then she laughs again. “Well. I'm sorry that I had to help you, but it didn't seem quite right to let you die. And hey, we killed a Deathclaw, huh? I've never done that before. Don't worry. You're already looking stronger. I don't doubt that you can take care of the next one yourself.”

The Lone Wanderer stands up. Brushes off her legs. Gob gets to his knees, hesitantly, and then stands.

There she is. Aris, _his_ Aris, and he can't find a single word.

She isn't looking at him. She asks suddenly, “I guess you heard? About my dad?”

He nods, dumbly.

“It's stupid, isn't it? I got to see him again, and... I should just be happy with that, right? But I'm not. The Brotherhood has stuff that they want me to do... I'm not sure if I'm up to it.” She shrugs. “Eh, I don't know why I'm telling you all this anyways. Maybe it's because you're a good listener. You always have been.”

She looks at him, finally, and smiles. “And not only that, but you were right. You _didn't_ need my help. You didn't need me at all. You found your own way out of Megaton, right? And here you are, without that woman, surviving well enough on your own.”

He risks a nod, his hands loose by his sides, and he feels something painful swelling in his throat. Shame. Indecision. Fear.

“So, I guess... good for you,” she murmurs, and turns away. “I'm really proud of you, Gob.”

She takes a step, and then another. Gob watches her, without recognition, and then starts as he realizes that she isn't just moving restlessly—she's walking _away_ from him.

“Where are you going?” he calls.

“Not sure yet,” she answers. “North, maybe. Get away from the city for awhile.”

“For... for how long?”

“A few years,” she says. “Give or take.”

“And... and you promise you'll come back?” he asks, pathetically.

Aris laughs, and it is a bleak sound. “I can't make promises, Gob. It's just too damn easy to break them.”

 _Right._ Gob closes his eyes in defeat. _She's leaving me. And I couldn't find a single thing to say._ His heart is aching. _I'm so stupid... too scared to even ask her to stay..._ Why? Just when he thinks that his life is getting a bit of happiness in it, something else comes to ruin it. Becoming a ghoul and losing his family... then being adopted by Carol and Greta... then gaining enough confidence to venture out on his own... then being forced into slavery... being bought by Moriarty, only to be worked to the bone... meeting Nova, only to pine after her for years... meeting Aris, only to lose her forever.

He stares after Aris, pathetically. _She's so beautiful._ That tiny girl with the miniature waistline and rhythmic hips, long-lashed beauty of fire and steel. She makes a gorgeous picture, her perfectly-formed ass bouncing just the slightest bit as she walks away, twin pistols in their holsters, and an SMG strapped across her back.

She wipes dust from her face again, and Gob remembers his thoughts from earlier—she is made of fire and steel, yes, but she is also made from glass.

She is _crying._

Gob feels something harsh break free inside of him, and he strides forward, and raises his voice. “You're wrong!”

Aris stops. She doesn't turn her head, but he still hears the exasperated laugh. “I'm _wrong?_ About _what?”_

“You're wrong,” he repeats, and comes a little bit closer. “I do need you, Aris. Please stay.”

She snorts. “Gob, if you'd just had a more powerful gun, you could have killed that Deathclaw, you know? I saw you from a distance. You had a great shot.”

“Kid,” he says, more firmly, “I ain't just talking about the Deathclaw.”

She looks at him warily. He can see the tracks where tears dripped down her face, still glistening. “What-”

He's in front of her in two more steps, and he fights everything within him—he _must_ get this right. He _has_ to.

Gob hugs her, tightly, winding one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist. She's so small, so fragile; she shudders in his arms, and returns his embrace. How could he have missed it? How could he have not seen her pain?

“Please stay,” he whispers again. “Aris. Please.”

The Lone Wanderer is so small. So warm. The top of her head reaches his collarbones, stopping just short of his clavicle. Her face is nestled against his chest. He can feel her heart beating against his belly, light and fast.

She says, “The woman-”

“A misunderstanding,” he says. “She, uh... I don't know what you heard, but nothing happened. Besides... it... it doesn't matter unless it's with you.”

She freezes, and Gob holds his breath.

“Then...”

She takes a deep breath, and her fingers curl into the gaps between his armor and his shirt. “Then, do you mean... that you...”

“I love you, Aris, and if you're going anywhere, then I'm coming with you,” Gob says. His voice might be steady, but he feels as if he's about to faint. _Confessing! Confessing to Aris!_ Is he _mad?_

But... if he doesn't... he stands to lose her for good. And more than that, he knows that it is the right thing to do. Not for his own selfish purposes, but just to hold her, and tell her that she is loved, and allow her to grieve for everything she's lost. To promise her that there is hope.

Because even if she rejects him, Gob will know that he did everything he could. That he had sacrificed his own comfort to try to help the beautiful girl with fierce eyes and a heart of gold.

“Even if you don't want me,” Gob says, his throat tightening, “I'll be here. And I'll wait for you.”

Aris sobs and buries her face into his chest. Warm tears leak out onto his armor, and Gob looks down at himself without recognition. Who ever would have thought that _he_ of all people would be comforting a woman? That one day he'd become strong enough for a girl to find solace in his arms? That he's become a hardened drifter?

Well, hardened in comparison to how he'd been before. He can't kill without flinching, and sometimes he is sick with fear; but his hands are always steady, and his pace assured. He hopes that his strength can hold out.

“Thank you,” Aris is saying. She doesn't answer his hinted question, but she doesn't reject him either. And that's enough for Gob. “Thank you.”

Her tears are dry in less than five minutes, and Gob watches her push down the rest of her grief, and she smiles at him, her eyes gleaming and sad.

“We should go somewhere,” she says, “if we're going to talk and catch up. The wastes aren't exactly the best place for a heart-to-heart.”

“No,” Gob agrees, “they're not. So, uh... do you have a safe house nearby?”

Aris smiles thoughtfully. “Not quite,” she says, “but I know a guy.”

 


	9. Here is the News

Aris won't tell him where they're going at first, and it aggravates him. They make good time through the wastes, heading back towards DC, staying relatively safe due to Aris's Pip-Boy. They spend hours weaving in and out of the metro, passing through tunnels cleared by Gob only hours before—they pass by the turn for Underworld, which causes a pang in Gob's heart, but he doesn't say anything. Now that he's free, he'll have time to see Carol and Greta—but at the moment, he's going to follow Aris.

Still, he has to hold his tongue to keep from begging her to turn left at the turn.

Instead, they pass it by.

When they start seeing the first hand-painted signs for the Brotherhood's GNR outpost, Gob doesn't think about what the three letters mean; he simply sees the Brotherhood sign and shudders, resting a hand on his Desert Eagle.

At Aris's questioning look, he explains, “Brotherhood. Most dangerous group for a ghoul out here.”

She smirks. “Even worse than a Deathclaw?”

He rolls his eyes. “That's hardly a comparison. Deathclaws are... well. But the Brotherhood is heavily armed and defended, and they're _everywhere._ They don't exactly go out of their way to kill us, but Underworld has had casualties because of them.”

She frowns, and a grim determination settles over her. “Don't worry. They won't kill you. I'll make sure of that.”

Eventually, they reach a door, and Aris says, “Wait here.”

Gob stops obediently and waits as she passes through; only then does he shake himself out of his blissful haze to check his surroundings. The condensation dripping from the ceiling. The chalky smell of radiation and dust. The old bloodstains on the walls, peeling and cracked.

His eyes come to rest on the graffiti sign: _To GNR Outpost._ And they widen.

“No,” he mutters. “No, she didn't—we _aren't actually-”_

The door bangs open, startling him, and he stares into Aris's grinning face. “Alright, we're good to go!”

“Aris—we're not—are we?”

She smirks. “We're not what?”

He struggles for words, and finally shouts, “ _GNR?!”_

Her grin widens. “Come on, they know you're coming.”

“O-okay,” he stammers, and follows her into the sunlight, trepidation suddenly settling over him. _They know I'm coming? Who? The Brotherhood? She... she can't mean Three Dog, can she? We won't_ actually _see him, right...?_ His heart pounds in his chest.

Upon stepping out into the GNR building plaza, Gob doesn't even notice the Brotherhood soldiers around him clicking the safeties off of their weapons and tensing around them. Instead... instead, his eyes are fixed on the steel beams of the radio tower, stretching into the gray sky, the lines of support wire that run from the roof to the broadcasting tower. It's like a gleaming silver dream, this massive structure pointing up into the sky, a beacon of hope, the rugged, stalwart vision of the Good Fight itself.

“Wow,” he breathes.

“Hey,” Aris snaps, “how about you back up a bit? And put that gun away. He's _safe.”_

Gob unwillingly turns his attention from the radio tower to the men and women around them; his fingers pluck nervously at his shirt, wanting to reach for his own weapon to feel safer and knowing that they will most certainly kill him if he does. He can't see any features under so much power armor, but he is sure that they're glaring at him.

“You have brought an abomination into our midst,” one of the soldiers states, his voice even deeper through the filter of the mask. “Any damage that monster causes will be on your head. It is your responsibility to put it down if it becomes a problem.”

“Understood,” Aris says dismissively, and takes Gob's hand—he sucks in a breath of air and his fingers jerk. _What—_ and he blushes. _That_ hadn't happened when he'd hugged her in the wastelands; what had changed? He'd assumed that with his new strength and confidence that he wouldn't be so desperate for touch, but the warmth of her skin is intoxicating, and each time her side or bicep or _any_ part of her, really, brushes against his, it sends pleasurable tingles down his spine.

Just like the day they had met.

“Come on,” she urges, pulling him along with a mischievous smile. “He's waiting for us.”

“He's-” Gob chokes, and stumbles after her, nearly tripping over his feet in excitement. _He's waiting for us._

She leads him up the stairs, past the glaring Brotherhood soldiers that Gob barely notices, and up a stairway. Gob's heart is thumping so hard that he's certain it's going to burst at any moment. He's looking around before they've even reached the top of the stairs; he honestly can't believe where he is, can't believe who he's about to meet. But on the walls around him are old radio posters, and newer ones advertising The Good Fight.

Aris squeezes his fingers. He hadn't realized that he was trembling.

There's music fading out, and Gob hears a click, and then an unfamiliar and yet extremely familiar voice saying, “Annnd welcome back to _Galaxy News Radio._ And as you know, we're expecting some guests; I _think_ they're here right now, unless my Brotherhood friends decided to ditch the tin suits for a day like I've been suggesting. Well? Come on over here, you two.”

Aris peeks up at him, grinning broadly, and pulls him along. Gob himself is too numb to remember how to move his legs.

She pulls him around the corner, and there, sitting in a red armchair, is Three Dog.

He's not what Gob expected, somehow, and yet precisely how he imagined. For one thing, he hadn't expected Three Dog to be black; he feels stupid for assuming something like that. And yet there's something about that half-smirking, friendly expression that makes Gob think that he's known him all along. He's grinning, his fingers steepled, and he doesn't flinch when he sees Gob. It's as if Three Dog half-recognizes him too.

“Hey Three Dog!” Aris calls. “How's it going?”

“Pretty good, I must say. Hey, have a seat. Alright, folks, this is a real special occasion. Not only do I have a rare guest appearance on my show, but it's none other than our very own Lone Wanderer and her friend Gob. You remember Gob? I gotta tell you guys, I owe this man _big-time._ He convinced Miss 101 to repair my signal, and I didn't even have to _ask._ She just went ahead and did it. Nice to know I've got people looking out for me, huh?”

Gob is frozen on the edge of his chair. He risks a terrified glance at Aris, and she laughs quietly and shakes her head.

“So I wanna extend thanks to the man myself,” Three Dog says, nodding to Gob. “I've heard you're an avid listener of the show?”

“Uh,” he rasps, and clears his throat. “Yeah! Every day for the past five years! Except, of course, when the signal went down.”

“Awh, so you were listenin' to old Three Dog from the very beginning! Tell me, what's your favorite part of the show?”

He blurts out, “I like hearing about Aris.”

The Lone Wanderer blushes, and Three Dog laughs, leaning back in his armchair. “Is that so? Huh. Can you tell me how you two met? I know it's an overworked issue, right, but I'm sure a lot of our listeners are curious about how a girl and a ghoul could get to be such good friends.”

Gob's nerve fails him, as he looks from Three Dog to the ON AIR sign on the desk, and Aris jumps in to bail him out. “He was my first friend after leaving the Vault,” she says. “Honestly, I thought he was terrifying when I first saw him. I'd never even heard of a ghoul before! Wouldn't you know, when we met, he was trying to get your signal in better! Funny how it all interconnects like that. Anyway, Gob's got a heart of gold, and he's so sweet and honest. I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for him.”

Aris pauses, and then adds thoughtfully, “To be more specific, though, we met in Megaton. He was working at the bar there when I stumbled in, desperate for someone to help me and explain what was going on.”

Three Dog laughs and nods. “Yeah, I'm sure! And Gob, hey, what did you think of Aris when you first met? Care to give us your first impression?”

He wets his lips. “Well... I was pretty distraught too. She walked into the bar, took one look at me, and started crying.”

Aris giggles. “It was okay, though, he calmed me down.”

Three Dog nods, once, and continues, “Now, here's the part I'm most interested about. Miss 101, you've always been known on air as the Lone Wanderer, 'cause you traipse around the wastes leaving a trail of _bullet casings_ and _dead enemies._ The Lone Wanderer—the only one to leave the places that she visits. What made you decide to take Gob along, after all this time?”

She shrugs. “Happenstance. I met up with him while he was killing a Deathclaw.”

Three Dog's eyes widen, and he leans in. “A Deathclaw? No way!”

“Yes, he was very brave,” Aris says, a smile playing at her lips as she glances at Gob. “I helped him finish it off, but he very nearly had the damn thing killed by the time I got there.”

“Don't flatter me,” Gob mutters, uncomfortable with her exaggeration, and she giggles again.

“Anyway, we're going to rest up for awhile and then figure out what to do next. We were actually hoping that you'd put us up for awhile.”

“Me? Awh, shit, I think ol' Three Dog could find it in his heart to have you stay over. S'long as you don't mind being within _spitting distance_ of the Brotherhood.” He grins, pauses, and then adds, “Hey, Gob, my man, you remember how I promised you'd get to pick the next song if you ever stopped by?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“What do you wanna hear?”

Gob doesn't have to think about it twice.

 

* * *

 

Three Dog puts them up in what he calls his “guest quarters” as Billie Holiday's crooning voice fills the room. He offers Gob the sofa, apologizing that there's only one bed, but Aris assures him that the mattress on the floor is big enough for two, that she's fine with sharing. At that, Gob blushes, and Three Dog raises his eyebrows.

“Well, uh. I'll let you get settled in, then.”

“Thanks, Three Dog,” Aris says softly. “It's been... a long day.”

Gob's tension mounts when she closes the door behind him, trapping both of them inside. Together. In a small room and a smaller mattress. And it's evening.

He's admitted his feelings for her, and insinuated his less than savory feelings as well. If Aris doesn't know what this is doing to him, then she's a hell of a lot less observant than he thought. Especially now that he's at half-mast just from her closing the fucking door.

She looks up at him. “Gob?”

“Mm.”

And she pauses, dropping her bags on the floor, and begins to unbuckle her armor. “You can take yours off too,” she says. “Might as well take a break from it while we can.”

His fists clench before he reaches for the array of zippers and buckles on the leather raider armor that Ewan had given him. His fingers catch once or twice, and he swears quietly. _Nerves._ At last the leather falls to the floor, and he unhooks the leg guards and drops them as well.

“There you are,” Aris murmurs. “I like you better without your armor.”

Gob grunts, unsure of what to say to something like that, but Aris doesn't seem to mind. She's stripped down as well, left in just her tiny shorts and that cut-off shirt that bares her toned belly.

Then she tilts her head. “Gob?”

“I'm still here,” he jokes nervously.

“...Can I try something with you?”

She's looking at him with a very serious expression, and Gob is suddenly terrified of what she might want from him.

“Ah... uhm... sure?”

“Take off your shirt?”

Gob pauses, a little uneasy, having a very unwelcome image of Melinda's psychotic demands. Forcing him down. Putting a knife to his throat. This time, though, he's fearful for a different reason. Not because of what Aris might do to him, but... because...

_I don't want her to see me._

Aris clears her throat, sensing his discomfort, and says, “Uhm. Well, you know that my... my dad, he was a doctor.”

Gob nods.

“It's not all just physical stuff, there's a lot of psychology to it, too. One of the most primitive pieces of mental health is getting enough skin-to-skin contact. It's _good_ for you.” She pauses, biting her lip. “I mean, you said that you lo—like me, right? Let me take care of you this time.”

Reluctantly, Gob pulls his shirt over his head and glances to the side, unable to look at her. She's so beautiful, and he's...

“Ah,” he rasps, feeling Aris's arms wrap around him. _Shit._ He's never... this much contact, this much closeness... Her hair tickles against his scarred and pitted chest. Her face is pressed into him, and he can feel all of her now, the pressure of her jaw, her ear cupped to his flesh, the strength of her heartbeat in her neck, and, oh god, her _skin._ Her soft, silky, warm skin.

A hard-on pops into place and this time there's no bar separating them. And he's just in jeans and she's in shorts and he's sure that she can feel him digging into her hip, throbbing painfully, but she doesn't say anything. She doesn't pull away.

Gob closes his eyes, nestles his face in her hair, and wraps his arms around her.

Aris hums. “Bed?”

 _That_ startles him. “Uh...”

“Come on, it's okay. We don't need to do anything.”

That's... not exactly what he's worried about.

But Gob would be a goddamn fool if he didn't take this chance, and he allows her to lead him to the bed, pull back the covers, and situate him exactly where she pleases. And then she lays down beside him and draws the sheet back over them.

Any more of this, and Gob's gonna be sweating out of sheer panic. _What the hell am I supposed to do? What am I_ not _supposed to do? She knows how I feel! Is... is she teasing me?_

Aris makes a few more contented noises as she settles in with him, alarmingly close, and then scoots over closer after he edges away, conscious of the hard lump in his pants.

Her foot slides against his leg; Gob can no longer tell if it's accidental or not; and she says, slyly, “You can take your jeans off too.”

He's laying down but he still feels dizzy. “Uh... okay.”

He tosses his belt across the room, cursing silently when it clanks loudly on the floor, and then kicks off his jeans, wadding them up underneath the covers, and pushing them down to the end of the bed where the sheet is tucked under. He moves more carefully now, conscious of his boner, almost entirely freed, and grits his teeth as he settles himself on his side. His pulse is pounding, lust almost overcoming him, but dammit, this is _Aris_ in his bed and he's not going to make her uncomfortable. S'long as he gives her enough room, she won't have to get poked with anything rude, and he won't have to worry about the short distance between them... how easily he could reach over to her, his hands hidden beneath the covers, and stroke her soft breasts...

Aris makes another happy noise and near about vacuum seals herself to his body.

He blinks, and then looks down at the top of her head. She's smiling against his chest, one arm under the pillow and the other tugging his waist taut against her belly. Her thigh is pressing into him, and the other is hooked around him.

Gob sighs. “Aris, if you wanted me to hold you, you could have just said so,” he mutters, putting his arms around her.

She hums again.

“I...” he says, and then pauses, fishing for the proper words. “You put so much effort into helping others. It's okay to want something in return.”

“But... it seems so selfish,” she whispers, and her lips brush against his sternum. It's all he can do to hold back the groan—but maybe he doesn't need to, because she had to have felt the jerk of his cock against her stomach.

“As if nothing I do isn't selfish?” he points out. “I'm just gonna come clean, kid, having you this close to me is some kinda dream.”

She giggles, and Gob sighs and pulls her tighter against him, forcing back the urge to start bucking his hips into her. “I'm... sorry,” he adds. “If I had known... I would have touched you too. I was so focused on myself that I never saw that you needed someone's touch as well.”

She shakes her head. “It's fine.”

“It isn't,” he says. “I should have paid more attention.”

“Gob,” Aris replies, “you didn't have anyone who really, honestly wanted to touch you for fifteen years. I _don't care.”_

He clears his throat, a little awkwardly. “Then, uh... you don't mind that I'm, uhm...”

She smiles again, and shakes her head. “No,” she says, and Gob supposes that it isn't surprising that she immediately knew what he meant. His boner isn't going away anytime soon. “Besides,” she adds, and he gulps as she digs her hips in against him. “I like you too.”

His breath catches. “Ah... oh.”

She giggles again.

Gob's mind is whirling. “For how long?”

“From the start,” she whispers, “but I guess not in the way you mean. When I saw how much you needed me... or at least needed to be touched, and how you reacted to me... I felt for you, Gob. I wanted to make you happy. And you charmed me, with your words and your smiles and kindness. I didn't come back to Megaton for trading or anything; I have Red to trade with and get stimpaks from. I came back to see _you.”_

“Aris...”

She finally lifts her face from the haven of his chest and smiles up at him. His breath catches. _Those blue eyes..._ looking at him with such happiness, completely devoid of fear or disgust. She reaches out, and her fingers stroke his ruined cheek. His eyes flutter closed.

She murmurs, “I was afraid that you... weren't interested in me.”

He chokes. “Are... are you serious?”

“You always pulled away from me,” she says. “I knew you were reacting to me, but... you always held back, and you got these awful expressions anytime I tried to hint at something.”

“I was _trying_ to not to drag you over the counter top and tear off your clothes and...” Gob's rough growl slows to an uncertain halt as he realizes what he's saying, suddenly embarrassed over his forwardness. He closes his eyes and mashes Aris back into his chest so that she doesn't see his blush.

“And what?” she teases.

“Mm,” he grumbles. “Maybe sometime I'll show you.”

“Good,” Aris says, her voice a sultry caress. “I'll hold you up to that.”

He growls again.

“Mm,” Aris sighs. “You sound feral when you do that.”

“I'm... I'm sorry.”

“No,” she says, “I like it. It makes you sound dangerous.”

He considers that. “I've never felt particularly dangerous. Most of the people in Megaton are somewhat afraid of me, but with Moriarty always beating me around...”

She scowls. “Well, he's an asshole.”

“Mm,” he agrees.

“Let's not talk about him,” Aris begs. “I just wanna cuddle with you.”

Gob looks up at the ceiling. “Oh... is... that all we're doing?”

She snickers at his poorly-hidden disappointment. “Gob, we're literally two dozen feet away from Three Dog.”

“Oh,” he says, feeling stupid. “Right.”

“You didn't seriously forget about your personal hero?”

“Never,” he promises, and rubs a worn thumb over her waist.

She purrs under his touch. “You're so sweet.”

They lay in silence, for awhile. Gob is uncomfortable with his boxers constraining him, but overall he is more content than he has ever been in his entire life. He has her. Aris.  _His Aris._ The most beautiful woman in the wastelands, a veritable whirlwind of death and destruction, and she's relaxed in his arms, baring all of her weaknesses before him.

“...thanks,” he says softly. “For bringing me here.”

“We needed a place to relax and calm down... you needed to meet the man of your dreams...” she trails off. Gob pushes her lightly and she snickers. “Hey, quit it. I'm doing this for you, remember? Skin-to-skin contact.”

“Trust me,” Gob rasps, “pushing you away is the last thing on my mind.”

“Mm,” Aris sighs. “Will you be able to fall asleep tonight, then?”

“Probably not,” he says truthfully.

“...Should I move?”

“No.”

“That was fast. Well, if I get my way, this won't be the last time we do this, so maybe I should. Just so that you can sleep?”

Gob hesitates. “...That's probably a good idea, but... I don't want you to go.”

“Mm,” she says. “I'll make a deal with you. I'll go for tonight, just so that you can sleep, but you can stay with me any other night that you want.”

_Shit._

He says, faintly, “Deal.”

Aris gets up, the rush of cold air under the covers stinging his skin, and Gob is given the satisfaction of having her round little ass in his face as she crawls out of bed. She smiles at him, pulling her jacket on over top of her shirt, and closes the door behind her.

Even without Aris in his bed, Gob still doesn't sleep that night.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will probably be the last. Thank you, all, for coming this far!


	10. these are the times that try men's souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're angry at the author clap your hands  
> If you're angry at the author clap your hands  
> If you're feelin' down and low  
> 'Cause the updates come so slow  
> If you're angry at the author clap your hands~

Gob wakes up to Aris shaking him awake, gently, and she smiles when he opens his eyes. With her leaning over him, their faces too close, he thinks he might still be dreaming. But the blasting headache that he gets once she pulls away assures him that he is, in fact, awake. His eyes are watering the instant her shadow draws away; _t_ _he lights are so goddamn bright..._

“Three Dog made breakfast for us,” she whispers. “Come on.”

Gob stumbles out into the radio room, tucking his shirt in. He feels awful. All in all, he probably managed about two hours of sleep last night. Despite the hard-on she'd abandoned him with, it wasn't because of lust that he'd lost sleep; his arousal had faded soon enough, and he was left with tension and anticipation.

 _You can stay with me any other night that you want._ What the hell had she meant by _that?_ Does she want him to travel with her? Is she planning on staying with him long-term? They haven't even kissed yet, and... shit. Does she _want_ to kiss him? Maybe she isn't interested in that. Gob knows from Nova that she has a 'no kissing on the mouth' policy because somehow that's more intimate than sex. Maybe kissing him would be even grosser than sleeping with him. Maybe—

“Gooooood _morning,_ Capitol Wasteland!”

Gob stops thinking at that point, and stares at the radio host at his desk. He's here. He's really here. It makes him flinch every time he sees Three Dog because he still can't believe it.

Aris hands him a plate of scrambled eggs from the nest of some kind of scavenging bird, probably a crow or a vulture, with a side of Cram. The scent is heavenly. It's probably the best-looking food Gob has seen in fifteen years.

“Thanks,” he says, and Aris quickly shushes him with a finger over her lips, glancing at GNR's reprimandingly-red ON AIR sign.

Three Dog grins at him and continues, “This is your host _Three Dog,_ and once again I'm here in the studio with our good friends Aris and Gob. The two of them are still getting ready, so we'll leave them alone for now, but rest assured that I'll ask them a few more questions before they run on outta here.

“Anyway, looks like we're having clear skies _today_... least, that was the impression that I got from lookin' at the sky from the roof. But that doesn't mean that rain might be comin' down _elsewhere!_ There's all sorts of dangers you need to keep an eye on—raiders, Enclave, and slavers. Stay safe this morning.”

Three Dog flips a switch and they all stay silent as the first few seconds of “La Vie en Rose” fill the room, even though the ON AIR sign is off.

“She has a beautiful voice,” Aris says softly.

Gob takes a bite of his breakfast.

“She was a talented lady, that's for sure,” Three Dog says, standing up. “Much like yourself, huh?”

She blushes. “If I could make my mercenary work as beautiful as Edith Piaf's songs, I think I'd have a lot less trouble. And the wasteland would be a lot better off.”

Three Dog says thoughtfully, “It already is, isn't it? Before you came, we were all stuck between a rock and a hard place. You were the only one strong enough to push the rock out of the way.”

“I've got a long ways to go yet,” Aris says with a shrug. “The Brotherhood wants me to run off to Vault 87 and retrieve something for them, but...”

“Hey, you take your time,” Three Dog says. “No one's rushing you.”

“ _They_ are,” she mutters.

“Don't let 'em. I know, I shouldn't be sayin' that, they're the guys helping me out, but you gotta take care of yourself. Take a vacation. No one's gonna be mad at you.”

“That's sort of what I'm doing already,” Aris says, gesturing at Gob, who's already setting down the plate, having scarfed down his meal over the course of the conversation. “I guess the two of us are going to figure out what we're gonna do next.”

“You live in Megaton, right?” Three Dog asks.

She makes a face. “Yeah, I got a house there after disarming the nuke-”

“You _disarmed the nuke?”_ Gob is astounded. “When the hell did you do that?”

“Last month,” Aris replies with a shrug. “When I went to see you, or _tried_ to see you, I got... kind of frustrated and I needed something to do. So I pulled out some pre-War magazines that I'd collected and one of them had an article about shutting down a malfunctioning nuclear battery, so I sort of used that as a guide and got to it.”

“Damn.” Gob isn't sure what else to say. “Who gave you the house? Which one?”

“Simms, and I got the two-story near the entrance.”

“Nice,” he says admiringly.

“I'd take Gob and go back,” Aris says, glancing at Three Dog, “but I doubt he'll want to return.”

“Old man Moriarty,” the DJ says, nodding in understanding, and Gob realizes that they must have spoken about him before. “Heard a lot about that guy, and none of it was very nice. Not a guy you wanna mess with. So... guess it makes sense to stay away. Huh. I guess Underworld would be a good place to go?”

Aris's face lights up. “Underworld! Yeah! Gob hasn't seen his mom in over a decade, and it's a safe place for both of us.”

She turns to him, looking excited, and says, “Let's go there! We can stay at her inn, and... well, that might get expensive for me if she won't let me stay for free, but I'll make it work! It can be my new base of operations. I mean, it's really really safe, and it has a doctor, and shops, and a bar...”

“No,” Gob says.

She blinks.

“We're heading to Megaton,” he says.

Aris forces out a laugh, looking at him as if he's gone mad, and says, “Gob. You do realize that Moriarty will have you shot the instant he finds out you're here? Hell, he probably already paid off Stockholm to snipe you on sight.”

He shakes his head. “Moriarty wouldn't do that. If he wants to kill me, he's gonna try to do it himself.”

“So... so, what, you wanna head on into Megaton and have some kind of _showdown?_ You're insane. Listen, Gob, who _cares_ about Moriarty? He isn't worth risking your life.”

“I won't be,” Gob says. “I know Moriarty. I worked under him for _fifteen years._ He's at least gonna listen to what I have to say.”

The Lone Wanderer purses her lips and looks at him askance. “I'm not sure, Gob.”

Three Dog interrupts, grinning. “Hey, I kinda like it. What better way to fight the Good Fight than to confront that old slaver?”

The song ends, and Three Dog is quick to flip on the microphone. “Well, we're back, and Gob and the Lone Wanderer have been filling me in on their plans. I have to say, boys and girls, the ghoul's got more _chutzpah_ than I initially gave him credit for. Thinkin' maybe I should start writing a radio show for the two of 'em; be some good _original content_ for this old station, huh?”

He winks, and Aris rolls her eyes.

“But a few more questions before you go,” Three Dog says.

“Sure, go ahead.”

 

The three of them talk for awhile longer, small things leading into bigger ones. Questions about surviving acid rain, about the upcoming  _Wasteland Survival Guide._ Aris tells stories he's never heard before, about occultists and cannibals, clever heroes and gritty mercenaries. Gob finds himself entranced by her words; he looks over at Three Dog now and then as she speaks, hoping that he's impressed, and he's pleased to find the radio host's eyes intent on her.

"You've fought Super Mutants before, right, Gob?" Three Dog asks. He's been doing that for awhile now, switching off between the two of them, question by question. There's a small smile around the corner of his mouth, as if he's the only one privy to a secret joke. He can't figure out if it's because Three Dog knows they're friends and wants to appease Aris, or if he's doing it because he's trying to prove some sort of point to his listeners, trying to give both of them equal airtime, man and woman, ghoul and human. "Any good stories?"

"Sure," Gob says. "I almost got killed by one. It broke my shoulder in a dozen places with a sledgehammer. The pieces of bone fractured apart so badly that they separated. Pushed right through my skin in six places." He makes a emphatic sound as he gestures, disturbingly visceral, so much so that his shoulder throbs in sympathy. "I'd be dead if I hadn't had a friend helping me out; and even then, I might not have made it if we weren't already on the edge of Bigtown."

"Shit," Aris says. "Thank god for Red."

"She's a great doctor."

"What about you, Miss Wanderer?" Three Dog asks. "Craziest Super Mutant story."

"You want the one where I pretended to be a Super Mutant, or where I pretended that I was dead to fool them?"

Three Dog's eyes gleam. "I only get to hear one?"

She represses a smile. "Maybe I'll tell you the second one another time. But for now—"

"Alright. While I'm  _very_ interested to hear how you managed to make your carcass so  _disgusting_ that not even a Super Mutant would touch it, I need to hear this. You pretended to be a Super Mutant? And it  _worked?"_

Aris laughs. "To be honest, there was a door between us."

"Now, you've got to go on."

"I was in the dead center of DC, right? One of those old office buildings, looking for caps, old tech, anything interesting. Filled with Super Mutants, and I was mowing them down when one of them tossed me. Smacked me across the room. One pistol went flying out the window, and the other, well... he fell on it when I stabbed him in the thigh. It didn't take much more to finish him off, he'd already been hit several times, but I was armed with nothing but a knife, and there were still dozens of muties around. Naturally, one of them comes to check."

Aris grins then. "I shut the door when I heard him coming, and locked it, and within less than ten seconds, he was pounding on the door."

She coughs, looking a little embarrassed, and says in what Gob assumes to be the deepest voice she can manage,  _"'What doing?'"_

Gob snorts.

"I wasn't really sure what to say, and he pounded on the door again.  _'Stink like human!'_ I... panicked. So, I cupped my hands like this—" and Aris demonstrates— "and I said,  _'No human here!'"_

There's a shocked silence, and Three Dog starts laughing. "No kidding! What'd he say?"

Her grin widens. "He didn't say anything; he broke down the door and came in guns blazing."

"Shit! I thought you said it worked? How the hell did you survive?"

"I jumped out the window, grabbed my pistol, and got the hell out of dodge." Aris smirks. "And I never said that it  _worked._ I just said that I pretended to  _be_ one."

"You're lucky you didn't break anything," Gob says, and Three Dog agrees with him.

“With that,” Aris says, slapping a hand on the table, “I think we should go. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Alright,” Three Dog says. “Hey, pal, you have a good trip back, okay?"

"Yessir!" Gob says, to which Three Dog smiles.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

 

* * *

 

Gob feels the familiar building of tension as they approach Megaton, but it feels off, different, as if it isn't really happening. He thinks it's because he's almost never seen Megaton from the outside, has had no reason to, and it just doesn't seem quite real. It looks bigger from the outside, with those high and rusting walls, and the scorch marks of lasers and jagged edges of bullet holes puncturing and pocking the outermost layer.

It seems like so much of a fortress that he can hardly believe that he had ever felt so unsafe inside.

Aris seems to be feeling similarly, because her face is tight as she saunters up to Deputy Weld at the entrance. He glances at her sidelong, wondering if her expression is showing worry for him, or some sort of guarded anger that he's insisted on coming here, when her fingers brush against his.

He captures her hand and squeezes gently before it falls away. He's unused to initiating anything with her, but he's ecstatic when he realizes that she's blushing as hard as he is. _She really does like me back,_ he thinks in wonder. _I like her... and she likes me..._ When had anything so wonderful happened to him? It's dizzying.

But then the automated gate opens up, and Gob looks upon Megaton for the first time in two months.

His stomach churns. The townspeople are going about their business as if he'd never left, as if nothing had changed. It makes what's left of his skin _crawl,_ to see this place again. The town of his enslavement and torment.

 _Strength,_ he tells himself sternly. _You didn't spend two months fighting in the wasteland just to come back here and cower._

Aris lets go of his hand, then, and looks at him, seriously. “Are you gonna be okay? We don't have to do this.”

“I need to,” he tells her, and then pauses. _She's not going to like this._ “And I need to do it alone.”

He was right; her face twists. “Gob-”

“Trust me,” he says.

Their eyes meet. 

Aris bites her lip, weighing his words, and then nods. “Ten minutes. Any longer than that, and I'm going to find you.”

“I'll be alright.”

“Don't underestimate him,” Aris warns. “You might feel like you can take on anything since you killed a Deathclaw, but Moriarty's just as dangerous. At least the Deathclaws have the sense to look like something evil.”

 _The old man is better at hiding it,_ he agrees silently. The calculations and machinations behind that greasy forehead are well-hidden, only revealed when he has the upper hand. Gob has seen him play as a concerned fatherly figure dozens of times, only to lash out and sweep everything away at the last moment.

The tension in him builds as he approaches Moriarty's Saloon, his filmy eyes taking in the battered sign with trepidation. _Shit. Why did I tell Aris to wait? I should have let her come with me. I should have... but would that make me look weak? To have the Lone Wanderer with me while I face Moriarty? It would, wouldn't it? Maybe I-_

He's reached the door before he's realized, hand automatically pushing the door open, and he stumbles over the stoop and smacks his forehead on the floor.

Jericho's cackling is the only sound in the bar, and Gob stands up, sheepishly. Nova is sitting on Jericho's lap, her eyes huge, and _thank god_ Moriarty isn't in the room.

“Gob!” Nova cries, and launches herself forward, and into his arms; he staggers back, alarmed. Nova has _never_ hugged him before. Never. He's even more grateful now to Aris; if he hadn't been touched so much by her, Nova's affection would be leaving him a nervous wreck.

Even so, it's so out of character for her that he's careful, eyes darting away anxiously. He's aware of Jericho's scowl, the heavy wrinkling in the old bastard's brow.

The office door opens and Nova backs away from him.

And there he is: the piece of shit himself. Five foot eight, long and stringy gray hair, and that _godawful_ smirk that Gob has seen every day for fifteen years. Seeing him is like a blow to the chest, and he fights to not shrink in on himself.

“Gob? So ye came back, eh?” Moriarty chuckles, and Gob experiences a sinking feeling. “You've got a lot of nerve, showing yer ugly face here.”

“I'm not here to fight,” Gob says.

“Of course ye aren't,” Moriarty scoffs. “I've half a mind to kill you for running off. You know I had to pay for damages to that young lady? Mm... Melinda, wasn't it?” The old man scowls. “Fierce little thing. But _you._ You had a shot with her, and you _squandered it._ Lost me a fortune.”

“She tried to...” Gob trails off, uncertain of what to say.

Jericho, still sitting at the corner table, snickers again, taking a sip of beer. “Please tell me I'm dreaming.”

“And?” Moriarty demands, ignoring Jericho. “Not like you aren't used to it. To seeing it, anyway,” he amends. “I would'a thought that bein' around Nova for this many years would teach ya how to spread yer legs and lie back.”

Gob's mouth sours, and he shakes his head. “That's why I'm here,” he says. “For Nova. You're gonna stop offering her to people.”

Moriarty throws his head back and laughs. Gob's fists clench, glaring at the old bastard, and he doesn't say a word, waiting for his mirth to quiet down before repeating himself.

“Nova,” Moriarty says, once he's finished. “Can ye get a load of this shit? Dumb fuck actually thinks yer stupid enough to leave me. Now... you _aren't_ actually that stupid, are ya?”

Nova shakes her head, although she looks sad. “I think I'm a smarter girl than you give me credit for, Colin.”

“That may be so,” Moriarty says, smiling, and then he sneers at Gob, “See? She doesn't want your meddling. I think Nova knows that she's better protected here than anywhere else in this shithole of a town. You think anyone else could protect her like I can?”

Gob says, quietly, “I can.”

“Oh, you poor fuckin' shuffler,” Moriarty sighs. “You ain't actually in love with that whore, are you?”

“No,” Gob says. “I have someone of my own.”

He watches shock cross Moriarty's face, and says, “Listen to me. This is what's going to happen. You're going to let me come back to work for you. And you're going to forgive Nova's debts. If she wants to keep working for you, as a prostitute, then... fine. That's her business. But you're at least going to give her the chance to leave.”

Moriarty laughs again. “Where'd all this backbone come from, Gob? Someone shove a rail spike up yer ass? You really wanna work for me again? You think I'd just _let_ you come back, without punishing you at all for running away? You think I'll let Nova go without putting up a fight?”

Gob meets his eyes, and takes a deep breath. Fights back the panic and fear, and for the first time in his life, he really just _looks_ at Moriarty, holding eye contact without shrinking away or cringing.

“Yes.”

The grin turns into a snarl. “Then you're a damn fool.”

“Mr. Moriarty,” Gob says, before the son-of-a-bitch touches his gun, “you should rethink this.”

He pauses, narrowing his eyes. “Yer gonna beg for your life?”

“No,” Gob says, and straightens. “I'm going to threaten yours.”

Moriarty's eyes widen as Gob takes a step forward, and Gob thinks, that for the first time in his life, Moriarty has realized just how much bigger his slave is than him. Gob has the height advantage by a good six inches, putting him a full head taller than the other man. His shoulders are broader, his arms thicker, and, for the first time in _his_ life, Gob takes full advantage of these facts.

Looming above him, he lowers his voice and growls, “You might be faster than me, Mr. Moriarty, but I'm stronger. And I'm no stranger to hardship. You've fought ferals before. You know how hard we are to kill. And I'm prepared to fight you. It doesn't matter if you raise your gun and shoot me a few times; I'll still have enough time to gut you. Shoot me in the head, even. It doesn't matter. Ghouls can regenerate almost anything. And chances are, I'll survive. All it takes is a few hours by the nuke, and I'm good as new.”

Gob rasps, “You, though... It might take you a little longer. Even with stimpacks. And believe me, you won't last long enough to recover. _I'll make sure of that.”_

For once, Moriarty doesn't have anything to say.

There's a tiny pearl of sweat on his brow that wasn't there before. Nothing besides that shows any sort of anxiety or nervousness; Moriarty's eyes are narrowed and he's glaring up at Gob just like he would any unruly drunk that he's about to throw out on his ass. But it's proof of his doubt.

A sliver of fear.

Gob's heart pounds, and he clenches his fists, forcing himself to stand his ground.

He'd thought, for a very long time, that his all-consuming passion for Aris would drive him feral. He hadn't realized, until now, what sort of thing could cause it. It's not frustration, at least not in the way he felt towards Aris. With  _her,_ there was never the urge to harm. He hungered for her, lusted after her curves, longed to devour her smile. But beyond that, he wanted her safe, and happy, and in his arms.

The root of this disease is hatred.

There's a red fog crossing his vision, and there's a little quiver somewhere inside of him that is slowly pushing Moriarty from the category of  _tyrant, monster, master_ to  _weak, human, fragile._

_Prey._

He wants to kill him. Both the man and the looming irradiated insanity want to tear this man to shreds, to tear into him with the awful strength that Gob has only just realized he possesses, to pay him back tenfold for all the misery he has ever caused him. For himself, for Nova, for everyone in the town. The feral ghoul, the thing that Gob has feared, the thing that everyone in the whole  _town_ has feared, is nearly bursting out of his chest.

Slowly, slowly, he tilts his head to the side, cracks it, lets out a long breath. He won't do it. He could, and he wants to, and he knows that if he destroys Moriarty and tears out his heart and eats the soft, squishy things inside him—let the madness take over, let his sanity crack—let Jericho blow out his brains while he's still snarling with shreds of bloody flesh trapped between his teeth—that it would be okay. He could do that, and it would be good, because Moriarty would be dead.

But he won't. Because now, even though he's come into his strength, now that he's found himself, now that he's become somebody that an arrogant bastard like Moriarty would actually  _fear—_

He still has a choice.

And Gob is not that man.

He steps back, giving Moriarty room to breathe, and continues in a normal voice, “It's like I said. I'll work for you... as an actual _employee_ this time. Five caps an hour, just a little more than you paid me before. I'll be getting weekends off. And this time you won't have to worry about room and board. I'm staying with someone else.”

“W-Who?” Moriarty finally splutters.

Gob wonders if he knows just how close to death he was.

“Aris,” he replies, and he hears Nova make a small noise behind him.

Moriarty looks like the sky has come crashing down, his eyes round with fear and confusion, and Gob almost feels sorry for him.

Almost.

He steps forward, and though it is nearly as difficult as holding back his rage, he extends a hand. “Do we have a deal?”

Looking as if he's about to vomit, Moriarty shakes his hand. As soon as he lets go, Moriarty steps back, wincing, and wipes his palm off on his clothes. “Fine... fine.”

He takes a deep breath, as if what he's about to say is going to kill him. Gob wouldn't be surprised if it did. He doesn't think that Moriarty's done a single kind thing in his life. “Gob, yer coming in at six in the morning. I ain't changing my hours for you, no matter what you threaten, so don't bother. And Nova. Yer debt's paid. If ye aren't staying with me, then... just... just get out.”

The old man goes up the stairs, more slowly, heavily, as if he's aged five years over the length of the conversation. Three pairs of eyes watch him cross the balcony, go into his room, and shut the door.

Gob clenches his fist, and relaxes himself slowly. He hadn't realized just how hard it was going to be... not to react in fear, but not to _kill_ him.

“Oh my god,” Nova says softly. “Gob... you did it.”

He looks at her, beginning to smile, and pauses when he sees Nova's tears. She smiles up at him tremulously. “You.... you saved us. Gobbie, we're _free!”_

“Gotta say,” Jericho says, “that wasn't what I expected out of you, Gob. I kinda thought that crying and pissing your pants was more your style.”

He grits his teeth, but Jericho continues, “But that took balls. I gotta say, I'm impressed. I didn't think that the Irish asshole was afraid of anything.”

“I think Gob startled him,” Nova says. “Didn't expect Gob to show up like some radio show hero and save the day. It was the last thing I expected, too.”

She looks up at him, wiping her face, and hugs him again. “You were so _brave!_ But what happened to you, Gobbie? Where were you? I'm so glad you're okay...”

As Gob recounts the events of the past two months, Jericho sits in the corner and drinks; he watches Gob with an unreadable expression. Nova's reactions are more understandable; she gasps and giggles and interjects with all sorts of caustic remarks, just as Gob expects her to do, but Jericho's silence makes him nervous.

“So,” Jericho says at last, when Gob is finished and Nova's glee is fading to a quiet glow, “you're gonna keep bartending for slave's wages. Not that I blame you. Folks stay with what's familiar. What are you gonna do, Nova? You gonna stay with the old man?”

 _Ah,_ Gob thinks, watching the two of them, _I see. He's hoping for a chance._ Gob may not have overheard it, but he knows from talking to Nova that Jericho is fond of her. Moreso than he would expect, after five years of watching Jericho slap her ass and treat her like a piece of meat. But if he's serious...

He wants Nova to be safe.

“Do I have a choice?” Nova shrugs.

“You always have a choice,” Jericho says, his eyes flinty.

He's opening his mouth to add something else, but Gob turns around and leaves.

Somehow, he knows what Nova's reply is going to be. He'd rather give them the privacy.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter is the epilogue.


	11. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue: an end, and a beginning.

 

_One month later..._

 

It's in the evening when Gob and Aris give their excuses and slip away from the celebrations. The dusky lavender light is spilling through the window, complemented by shifting swirls of orange and white as the torches spread through town gutter down and flicker in the wind. Gob immediately heads for their bed, worn out and the slightest bit tipsy. He falls forward, facedown into the pillows, spreading his arms wide and letting out a small groan of contentment.

Aris giggles and he smiles into the fabric. Inhales as he hears her kicking off her shoes. The pillows smell like her, baked earth and musky leather, like the honey-sweet soap that she uses.

He can smell himself, too, bitter sweat and oozing flesh, but chooses to ignore that, pressing his face deeper into Aris's pillow and breathing in. He lives for this, their time together. Just being at peace, calm, savoring her company.

He hears the rustle of fabric, feels the leaning mattress when she plants a knee onto it. He sighs, rising up onto his forearms to shift over to his side, when she hooks her other thigh around his torso and pins him down with her weight.

Gob's eyes widen, and he lifts his face just enough to speak. “What are you d-”

“Shh.” Aris's hands glide forward, onto the edges of his face, smooth fingertips running over pockmarks and deep cratered scars left by radiation, up over the ragged remains of his ears, and just as the sensation tapers off, she slides her hands forward again, into the thin patches of hair covering his scalp.

 _Shit._ His heart is hammering. Just like Aris had promised, they've been sharing a bed for the past month, but 'sharing a bed' doesn't always mean that both of them are in it. Aris hasn't abandoned her duties as the Savior of the Wasteland, and is often gone for days at a time; Gob works at the bar, still, and picks up mercenary work if he feels the need to get away from Moriarty for awhile. Just last week he'd helped escort a caravan to Bigtown.

They still haven't kissed. Gob feels foolish most of the time, sleeping in Aris's bed, by himself, while his beautiful Lone Wanderer storms the wastes and kills raiders. Dumber yet when they _are_ together, with Aris spooning him in the heavy darkness, her arm slung over his waist. He wonders, all too frequently, if she decided to change her mind. That Gob fulfilled her need for companionship and didn't want him for anything else.

He wouldn't blame her.

Aris's fingers card through his hair again, and he sighs, pressing his face into the pillows, feeling the tension slide out of him. Whatever it may be, he's content. This is more than he had ever hoped for.

Gob doesn't remember ever having his hair petted like this. Maybe when he was a kid, still a smoothskin, sitting on the floor by his mother's chair, leaning against her legs when he was too sleepy to hold himself upright. Despite being driven away from his home after his ghoulification, he knows that they loved him. Or, at least, he wants to believe that they did. It fills him with a certain nostalgia, to be touched so tenderly.

The pressure increases slightly, and he winces when the callouses on her trigger finger drag at a deposit of crusted fluid near his ear. She doesn't say anything, which he's grateful for, but he notices that she stays away from that spot afterwards, a little more careful to avoid touching the scabby, flaking sections scattered over his head.

 _Embarrassing._ There's nothing he can do to help it, but...

Her fingers begin tracing the lines of flesh, staying right on the mottled lines between gray skin and the raw, leathery tissue exposed to the air. Just like that day in the bar, so long ago.

“It,” he starts, and clears his throat to rid his voice of its huskiness. “It doesn't hurt. You can touch me wherever you want. I mean. _If_ you want to.”

“Hmmm,” Aris says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. She leans forward, and he can feel the muscles of her inner thighs squeeze against his waist for the barest instant.

He shivers, tensing suddenly, and relaxes just as quickly when she massages his scalp, more deeply this time. _Oh, god._ Feels too good to be true. The ends of her nails dig in when she draws her hands back, and his skin prickles in response. Back up through his limp patches of sparse hair, and then rubbing circles on the crown of his head.

He's a little disappointed that she isn't touching the raw parts, but he can't exactly fault her for that. As amazing as it feels, having her soft skin sliding against exposed nerve endings, he knows it's gross. No smoothskin likes looking at exposed musculature. Certainly not touching it. Even if it isn't bloody, even if it's not-

 _“Ahh,”_ he breathes out, an embarrassingly soft noise, and rolls his head back into her hands as her thumbs draw over the largest patch of raw flesh. Aris scoots forward, slotting her knees against his underarms, and reaches forward for his hairline, pulling back over his entire head without discrimination. A shudder runs down his spine at the conflicting sensations, the sharp pleasure so intense it's almost painful, the pads of her fingers tripping over the bordering scars, then back into his hair. The asymmetrical patchwork of his scalp makes the feeling all the more intense.

“You okay?” Aris asks.

“Fine,” he says, not caring that his voice is muffled. He's just lucky it didn't come out as a whine. _Please keep touching me._

Aris hums and continues, and by the way her thighs clench around his chest momentarily, he wonders if she doesn't know what she's doing to him. Hell if he knows. Or cares. Right now he can't really think about much of anything, not when all he can focus on is the feel of the side of her thumb leaving tender strokes along the back of his neck.

Already, there's a pressing need between his legs, and he grimaces despite—or, rather, _because of—_ Aris's attentions. Shifts his hips to adjust himself, and the friction is just enough to take the edge off his arousal. Closes his eyes again, relaxes into the bed.

Aris scoots back, lower on his spine, and for a moment Gob thinks that she's stopping—but her hands are on him again, rubbing into his neck, down his back, working over his tired muscles.

The wash of pleasure sweeps into him, over and over, as her hands repeat the movement, until it becomes as soothing and steady as the tide. Aris's ministrations slow with each pass, and the world drifts away, leaving Gob awash in darkness and warmth and contentment, nothing but the feel of his Wanderer's hands tying him to the earth.

At long last, she sighs, and moves away from him. More than half asleep by now, Gob grumbles at the loss of warmth, his scalp still tingling, but Aris only laughs at him and draws up the sheets. They resettle into new positions, and Gob uses the last of his awareness to blink open one eye and squint at the window—thick darkness. Probably around eleven o'clock.

He's almost fully asleep when Aris edges forward, and then sits up.

“What,” he asks, his voice a drowsy growl.

“Today was good,” Aris says at last, and reaches out, her hand resting on his forearm. “Nova looked beautiful.”

Gob mumbles, “She's too good for him.”

“Probably,” Aris agrees with a laugh. “Jericho seemed almost startled that she stayed throughout the whole thing, like he expected her to run off at the last minute.”

“I wouldn't blame her if she did.”

But he's happy for her. Nova and Jericho had a small wedding, but it was more than Gob had expected, and he'd eyed Jericho suspiciously the entire time, half wondering what the bastard was playing at. Despite his terrible reputation, though, it seemed as if he was genuine in his affection for Nova. She couldn't have done any worse for her choice of partner, but Jericho would protect her.

Her thumb rubs in slow circles on his arm, as if she hadn't just been touching him nonstop for the past hour and a half, like she can't get enough of him.

“Aris...”

“Gob,” she says, “I...”

Shakes her head. Gob isn't sure if he's uneasy or relieved that he can't see her expression in the darkness. With the barest hint of light at the window, framing her silhouette, he can only see the moonlight outlining her against the night. Black on black.

“It's okay,” Gob says eventually. “Take your time.”

A heavy sigh, and she turns her head so that he can barely make out the profile of her nose. Nothing else is visible. “Thanks,” she says. “For not leaving. I'm not exactly the easiest person to get along with.”

Gob makes a quick protest, but she cuts him off. “I mean it. We've hardly seen each other over the past month. I'm not ungrateful. I'm _not._ It's just...”

He waits.

“Some things are easier to avoid than to face,” she murmurs, and sighs. “You're much braver than I am.”

Gob startles, eyes widening, hoping that she isn't about to say—that she isn't—it's not that he has nowhere else to _go,_ far from it, after all, he has the Underworld to go back to, or even Bigtown, but—because it's _Aris—_

Despite his momentary panic, Aris doesn't do what he fears. She doesn't make an end to their cautiously budding relationship, doesn't tell him that she wants him out of her house. She doesn't tell him that she finds him unattractive.

She doesn't say that she's found another man. Someone who could please her in ways that Gob never can, someone with a full head of hair and all of his skin, with none of the shame that being with a ghoul would cause. Someone who can give her children.

And yet...

And yet she doesn't say the words that he's been longing to hear. Doesn't hear _I love you_ or _I want you more than anything else in the world._ She doesn't break down and tell him her every secret, doesn't promise herself to him forever. She doesn't soothe his fears, doesn't tell him that it doesn't matter, that she wants to be with him more than she wants children, more than she wants respect, more than she wants normalcy.

She does not become everything that Gob has idolized her to be, in that moment. She does not turn into a prowling vixen, eager to divest him of his virginity; she does not turn into a sweet and pliant girl with all the blushing shyness of a young lady on her wedding night, terrified and eager for him to take her. She doesn't turn into a white-skinned miracle, a falling star, a cheerful song in a blind and windy night—

No.

Instead, she does something greater. She leans forward, surprising him, and he wonders for the briefest of moments while looking up at her, if it is finally bright enough to see her eyes.

And she kisses him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for making this my most popular fic by far. Thank you for sticking with me even though it's taken me longer than I wanted to finish. Thank you for your compliments, complaints, and urging me to complete this work. In particular, the people who commented around Chapter 8 and beyond really helped me to get me back in gear: Bluskyy, Mintaka, Lady_Trevelyan84 (goddammit, I see you everywhere, woman--how do you find good fics so quickly? And not even necessarily ones in the Fallout franchise?? Like, wth?? Do you live online??'), RemindMeWhoIAm (I love you lots), MindInMyth (not gonna lie, I stalk your bookmarks, after seeing that you like the same things I do), Happy_Drifter_of_Cold_Winds (I also love you), Aduuuh, Actually_Fen_Harel, M7-97, SavvyByte, and last but not least, Kim the guest who was the last commenter to finally get me off my ass and get these last two chapters written.
> 
> Finally, and most importantly, a HUGE thank-you to orayang, who wrote the fic "Touch" that birthed this monstrosity twice the length of her/his own fanfiction.  
> If you have not read their work, please do! It is probably my favorite Fallout 3 piece in existence, and I'm forever grateful that I was allowed to do a fanfiction of their fanfiction.
> 
> Regards,  
> Magnificent

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Shot At Normalcy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13081479) by [sisterofdionysis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisterofdionysis/pseuds/sisterofdionysis)




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